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THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS 
OF 1860-1861 

A Study in Public Opinion 

TXZn 



BY 

MARY SCRTJGHAM, A. M. 



SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
IN THE 

Faculty of Political Science 
Columbia University 



NEW YORK 
1 92 I 



THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS 
OF 1860-1861 

A Study in Public Opinion 



BY 

MARY SCRUGHAM, A. M. 



SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
IN THE 

Faculty of Political Science 
Columbia University 



NEW YORK 
1921 



S+3 



Copyright, 1921 

BY 

MARY SCRUGHAM 

- 



JEo thr 

GREAT NATIONALIST 

HENRY CLAY 

WHOSE GENIUS DIVINED AND WHOSE SKILL EFFECTED* THE 

CONCILIATIONS WHICH WERE ESSENTIAL TO THE 

PERPETUATION OF A NATIONAL UNITY BASED 

ON THE COMMON CONSENT OF THE 

NORTH AND THE SOUTH, THE 

EAST AND THE WEST 

ALIKE 



PREFACE 

The title and contents of this monograph have undergone 
an evolutionary process. In its most rudimentary form, 
the title was " The Reconstruction Period in Kentucky." 
When it was ascertained that the reconstruction ardently 
desired by the Kentuckians was a peaceful, pre-war af- 
fair, the title immediately underwent transformation in order 
to make a distinction between pre-war and post-war re- 
construction. In its final form it deals with the pre-war 
period. 

That the Kentuckians of 1861 were the most Consti- 
tution-abiding and peaceable of all Americans was not 
necessarily the result of preeminent ability in the science of 
government but was chiefly due to their geographical loca- 
tion. They were situated in the center of the nation and 
were therefore equipped with a better understanding of 
the governmental problem confronting the nation than would 
have been possible had they inhabited a region less in 
touch with the current of opinion in all sections. 

Kentucky's decision in 1861 was that neither secession 
on the part of the South, nor coercion on the part of the 
North, was a justifiable solution for the governmental 
problem of the time. The Kentuckians felt that the condi- 
tions existing in 1861 did not warrant such extreme meas- 
ures but did warrant the assembling of a National Conven- 
tion such as that which met the great crisis at the other 
critical period in the nation's life with success. They 
felt that the brain of the American people was capable of 
adjusting the existing difficulties and therefore strenuously 
421] 7 



g PREFACE [ 4 22 

opposed an appeal to arms. The following account is in 
some measure an explanation of the point of view which 
caused the peaceable Americans of 1861 to arrive at such a 
conclusion and to demand the calling of a National Con- 
stitutional Convention to settle the dispute. 

The completion of this monograph leaves me deeply in- 
debted to the following persons : to Mr. Cabell Bullock, for 
encouragement at the psychological moment ; to Miss Grace 
Everson for assistance in collecting data; to Dr. Glanville 
Terrell, for his Grecian readiness to argue indef atigably ; 
and to the late Mrs. Desha Breckinridge, for an inspiring 
confidence. 

There are a number of persons who have assisted in the 
preparation of this work by making available the data on. 
which it is based. Chief among them are: Mrs. Mary 
Crittenden Haycraft, Miss Sophonisba Breckinridge, Mr. 
John Fitzpatrick, Judge Shackelford Miller, Judge George 
C. Webb, Mr. John Wilson Townsend, Mrs. Thomas H. 
Clay and Mr. Harrison Simrall. 

However, in so far as this historical account is an in- 
tellectual achievement of any merit, my heaviest debt of 
gratitude is to Professor William A. Dunning of Columbia 
University who rivals Socrates in the subtle art of ques- 
tioning and to whom, I and many other students of Political 
Science are profoundly grateful for the teaching of a great 
master. 
Allendale, March 7, 1921. 



CONTENTS 

evtts 

CHAPTER I 

American Ideas in Regard to the Abolition of Slavery on the Eve 
of the Civil War " 

CHAPTER II 
The Nationalistic Basis of Neutrality 23 

CHAPTER III 
The Campaign of i860 36 

CHAPTER IV 
Government of, by and for the People 53 

CHAPTER V 

The Political and Psychological Significance of the Firing at Fort 
Sumter 78 

CHAPTER VI 
Kentucky's Decision 105 

423] 9 



CHAPTER I 

American Ideas in Regard to the Abolition of 
Slavery on the Eve of Civil War 

Across the Atlantic in 1861, philosophers and statesmen 
asked one another why twenty-five million intelligent Amer- 
icans could not settle the condition of four million un- 
educated Africans without tearing one another's throats. 
Doubtless some thought with Alexander H. Stephens of 
Georgia, that the Americans lacked both sense and patriot- 
ism. Lord Bryce has reached the conclusion that fighting 
could have been averted had our governmental organiza- 
tion been equipped with a cabinet system such as the English 
then had. However, Mr. James Ford Rhodes and other 
authoritative historians have decided that a blood-letting 
conflict was really inevitable in America, because the North 
believed that slavery was wrong and the South believed that 
slavery was right and they thus unalterably expressed them- 
selves at the presidental election of November 6, i860. 

Nevertheless, in reading through the files of newspapers 
and letters bearing the date, i860, one is deeply impressed 
with the fact that the Americans as a people no more fore- 
saw and willed the event which was about to transpire in 
1 86 1 than the Belgian people in 191 3 foresaw and willed the 
war which was so soon to break upon them. Certainly the 
political platforms on which the candidates stood in the 
presidential campaign of i860 contained no planks with 
clear-cut policies in regard to the coming event which the 
425] ,L 



12 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^ 2 6 

election of i860 is supposed to have unalterably determined. 
The platform most pleasing to the cotton-growing slave 
states contained no ultimatum to the northern free states in 
regard to slavery. The platform on which Lincoln stood 
merely asserted that the southern demand for the protec- 
tion of slavery in the national territories by the national 
government, on the ground that the Supreme Court had 
declared that slaves were property, should not be granted. 
The platform emphatically opposed the extension of slavery 
into the national territories under the auspices of the fed- 
eral government and declared in favor of the national gov- 
ernment's prohibiting extension of slavery into the territor- 
ies. Thus the Republican platform is a far cry from an 
explicit declaration in favor of a bloody emancipation of the 
slaves in the southern slave states. It is miles away from 
a declaration in favor of emancipation without compensa- 
tion to the owner. 

The slaves themselves were quite unaware that a blood and 
iron emancipation was impending and on the whole were un- 
conscious of a desire for it. The free white labor which ex- 
isted side by side with slave labor in the southern states sig- 
nally failed to realize the irrepressibleness of the conflict be- 
tween the two systems and voted almost unanimously against 
the candidate who prophesied the " all free eventually " sys- 
tem and who advocated the prohibition of slavery in the 
national territories. Nor did the free white laborers of the 
North feel called upon to vote overwhelmingly for free soil, 
much less did they express a desire to lay down their lives to 
bring freedom to the negro slaves of the South. One of 
the spokesmen of the northern labor organizations declared 
against negro emancipation on the ground that the blacks 
would be economically in a worse position under the system 
of wage labor than they were under slavery : for the " poor 
negro leads the life of a farm horse; the poor white that of 



427] THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY ^ 

a horse kept at a livery stable who is worked by everybody 
and cared for by nobody." 1 

In view of the prevalence of such indifferent ideas in re- 
gard to abolition in i860, there seemed no prospect for the 
" irrepressible conflict " to burst into flame the following year. 
There was no intimation on the part of the American people 
that they had any serious plans for undertaking to free the 
Africans at all. The leading issue in the presidential cam- 
paign concerning the negro was solely, in the North, that 
of excluding him by law from the national territories from 
which he had already been excluded by economic facts, 2 in- 
asmuch as the soil and climate of the national territories 
were such as to render the growing of cotton, sugar and 
tobacco unprofitable, even if there had been enough negroes 
in the country to establish the system in more new territor- 
ies. The Republican platform proposed to> make as- 
surance doubly sure by prohibiting slaves in the national 
territories by statute law in order to satisfy that portion of 
the northern mind which did not comprehend the signifi- 
cance of economic facts; and in order to ease the consciences! 
of those who were troubled over their joint responsibility 
for human slavery in regions under national and not state 
control; and last but not least perhaps, in order to gratify 
the Republican party politicians' inextinguishable ambition 
for public office. 

Who then willed that the " irrepressible conflict" 3 should 
begin in 1861 ? Absolutely, there is no- evidence that the 

1 George H. Evans in Working Men's Advocate. Quoted in Schlii- 
ter's Lincoln, Labor and Slavery. 

7 Rhodes, vol. ii, p. 418. " Nowhere in the existing territory of the 
country was there the possibility of carving out another slave state." 

3 The phrase " irrepressible conflict " as understood by the mass of 
northern people during the pre-war period did not signify an armed 
conflict. 



I4 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 42 g 

American people, when they gave their votes at the polls on 
November 6, i860, expressed themselves in favor of fight- 
ing as the method of their choice for settling the condition 
of four million uneducated Africans. 

However, coming events usually cast their shadows be- 
fore them. Bad blood existed between the spokesmen of 
some of the northern states and some of the southern states. 
It had arisen in the course of arguments in the national 
Congress over the benefits and disadvantages of the slave 
labor system. The one set exaggerated the evil and the 
other, the good of the slave labor system, so that the 
"heaven they argued no nearer to them got, but gave them 
a taste for something a thousand times as hot." The re- 
sult of these heated debates at Washington was that the 
statements of the extremists in the North and in the South 
came to be regarded in the opposite section as a fair sample 
of the views of the masses of people in the section whence 
the representative who had uttered them originated. 

In addition to the practice of this bad logic both in the 
North and in the South in regard to the numbers of persons 
who entertained extreme views on either side of the slavery 
question, a tendency existed in the South to make no dis- 
crimination between the anti-slavery policies advocated by 
Garrison, Brown, Seward and Lincoln, respectively. To 
many a southerner these northerners were all abolitionists 
of the same hue. Southern newspapers and politicians' 
used the words " abolitionist " and " Republican " as 
synonyms. 1 There was, of course, some ground for this 
confusion after 1858. Lincoln's house-divided-against- 
itself-cannot-stand speech made in that year sanctioned the 
abolitionist ideal, though he advocated no program at that 
time to bring about its realization other than the prohibition 

1 Sherman papers, William T. Sherman to John Sherman, Oct. 3, 
i860. 



429] THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 15 

of slavery in the territories. Seward took practically the 
same stand in a more vigorous speech at Rochester, N. Y., 
a few months after Lincoln had ventured to open up this 
new political prospect of " all free eventually " as a goal 
for the Republican party. It was in this speech that 
Seward asserted that an irrepressible conflict existed be- 
tween slave and free labor and Lincoln concurred in this 
phrasing of the matter on the eve of his nomination for the 
presidency by the Republican party. In 1859, John Brown 
made an attempt to bring about the freedom of the negroes 
by a raid into Virginia in the hope of inciting the slaves to 
an insurrection which would result in their own emancipa- 
tion. Garrison, the founder of the " Liberator," a paper 
devoted to preaching the gospel of freedom for everybody, 
was as much opposed to the use of violence as a method of 
liberating the African as he was to slavery itself. He was 
a moral-suasionst. However, the southerners made no 
careful distinctions between politicians, direct actionists and 
moral-suasionists. If the majority of southerners ever 
knew that the Republican platform on which Lincoln and 
Seward stood denounced John Brown's raid into Virginia 
as an infamous crime and gave only a ray of hope to 
Garrison, they doubtless considered it subtle hypocrisy. 1 

1 The following resolutions adopted by the Democrats of Tennessee 
will serve to illustrate southern feeling toward the Republicans: 

Resolved: That the organization of the Republican party upon 
strictly sectional principles, and its hostility to the institution of 
slavery, which is recognized by the Constitution, and which is in- 
separably connected with the social and industrial pursuits of the 
southern states of the confederacy, is war upon the principles of 
the Constitution and upon the rights of the states. 

Resolved: That the late treasonable invasion of Virginia by a 
band of Republicans was the necessary result of the doctrines and 
teachings of that party; was the beginning of the "irrepressible 
conflict" of Mr. Seward; was a blow aimed at the institution of 
slavery by an effort to excite servile insurrection. 

Official Proceedings of the Democratic Convention, p. 69. 



l6 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^O 

The inhabitants of the border free and border slave 
states had a much better opportunity to become acquainted 
with the distinctions which the various leaders of opinion 
made in regard to slavery. It was undoubtedly clear to 
most of the border states people that a majority of the 
northern people, when they thought about it at all, may 
have hoped that slavery would eventually be abolished in 
a way perfectly satisfactory to the southern people. 1 But 
the subject did not greatly concern the mass of northerners 
except when it was thrust upon their attention by a runaway 
negro, a pathetic story, or a radical press. The great mass 
of northern people gave no evidence of feeling such an in- 
tense and sustained sympathy with the southern slaves and 
such a bitter antipathy to the system that they would be wil- 
ling to tax themselves to accomplish the freeing of the 
negroes by purchase or that they would be willing to lay 
down their lives in a crusade to free them at the point of a 
bayonet. Toward immediate emancipation the attitude of 
the vast majority of northern people was one of blank in- 
difference. Comparatively, Gerrit Smiths and John 
Browns were very rare, but their numbers appeared all too 
plentiful to the South, where John Brownism on its reverse 
side of servile insurrection came to the fireside of every 
southern home. Slaveholder and non-slaveholder were 
unanimously opposed to encouraging the slaves to murder 
their masters and their masters' families or whoever hap- 
pened to get in their way. 

1 The following quotation from the Louisrille Journal, Aug. 14, i860, 
shows the border-state point of view : " We seriously believe that 
when the North and the South meet each other face to face and eye 
to eye: when they take their ideas of each other's sentiments and 
opinions from unprejudiced sources, and not through the perverted 
mediums of stump speeches, partisan diatribes, buncombe resolutions, 
they will be prepared to fraternize most cordially, and kick parties, 
politicians, platforms and schemers into the pit of Tophet." 



4 3 1 ] THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY iy 

Though the methods of Lincoln and Brown were dif- 
ferent, their aims were identical. They both heartily hated 
the southern domestic institution of slavery and desired its 
abolition. 1 Lincoln possessed political sagacity to a high 
degree and well understood the force of public opinion. He 
realized that violence on behalf of a reform produced per se 
in the public mind a reaction against the reform. He felt 
that it was useless to run too far ahead of public opinion in 
attempting to bring about the emancipation of the slaves. 
Therefore he aimed to go only so far and so fast as public 
opinion would sustain him at each step — that is to say just 
far enough to lead, just a little way ahead. Brown, on the 
other hand, had no practical sagacity of this variety. He 
thought that public opinion could be accelerated by direct 
action and was willing to lay down his own life to advertise 
the wrong of slavery, though the effect he desired his death 
to produce was somewhat dimmed by the numbers of 
women and children, slave-holder and non-slaveholder, who 
would meet death were his methods successful. Most 
people find difficulty in believing that it is consistent " to 
inaugurate the principles of heaven with the artillery of 
hell." The cure is worse than the disease. 

When Lincoln sounded the " eventually all free " note in 
his campaign against Douglas, he had a very definite poli- 
tical object in view. His immediate purpose was to win 
enough votes to get elected to the United States Senate. 
His ground for asking for the votes of his fellow Illinois 
citizens was that he would represent those who did not want 
slavery to spread into any of the national territories. He 
promised to vote to prevent the extension of slavery should 
he be successful in winning the election. However, at the 
time he was making this race for the Senate with Douglas, 
it was becoming increasingly clear that slavery did not have 

1 Lincoln said he hated slavery as much as any abolitionist. 



!8 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^2 

the ghost of a show for establishment in any of the unset- 
tled lands then belonging to the nation because the economic 
basis for the system was lacking in all of them. The defeat 
of the slave-state constitution in Kansas made it certain 
that none of the land which Douglas had opened to 
slavery north of 36 30' would become slave. In view; 
of the economic circumstances it was becoming more 
and more evident that unless the Republican party acquired 
new tenets there was no reason for continuing its organiza- 
tion. The purpose for which it had been organized, 
i. e., restoring the free status of the land lying north of 
36° 30', having been accomplished, it would fall to 
pieces unless it acquired other reasons to continue its ex- 
istence. Seward, one of the leading lights of the party, 
and Greeley, the leading editor of the party, were willing 
at this time to dissolve the party, but Lincoln was unwilling 
for the Republicans to disband their distinctive anti-slavery 
organization and have nobody to follow but Douglas, 1 who 
did not care whether slavery was " voted up or voted down." 
Accordingly, in his debate with Douglas, he had to supply 
additional material for the sustenance of the party's life; 
for the time was rapidly approaching when it would be- 
come obvious to everybody that the extension of slavery 
into the territories had been checked permanently by pre- 
vailing economic conditions. In order to win victory at the 
polls in 1858 it would be necessary for a Republican candi- 
date not only to hold persons already enrolled in the mori- 
bund political organization, but also to gain additional re- 
cruits to the cause of prohibition of slavery in the territor- 

1 Rhodes, vol. ii, p. 329. Lincoln said " [Douglas's] hope rested on the 
idea of visiting the great ' Black Republican ' Party and making it the 
tail of hi® new kite. He knows he was then expecting from day 
to day to turn Republican and place himself at the head of our organ- 
ization." Also see p. 308. 



433] THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY ! 9 

ies by federal law. The two groups from which new 
members could be drawn were the bona-fide abolitionists 
and the Henry Gay " Whigs " who had hitherto refused 
to enroll themselves in a sectional political party. The 
abolitionists supplied the soul of the anti-slavery movement 
of the North, but they in general had refused to vote for 
anybody who compromised on anything less than a declara- 
tion in favor of abolition of slavery in the slave states. The 
Henry Qay Whigs of the North opposed a further acquisi- 
tion of territory which could be devoted to slavery but de- 
sired ultimate abolition only under conditions equitable to 
the South. They had the most kindly feelings toward the 
southern whites and like Clay they preferred the liberty of 
their own race to that of any other race, although they were 
no friends of slavery. 

Lincoln so skillfully calculated the wording of his famous 
House-Divided speech that it won converts to his following 
from both of the above mentioned groups. It carried water 
on both shoulders, so to speak, for it was so constructed 
that it was acceptable to both radicals and moderate conser- 
vatives. The first part of the paragraph which follows 
contained bait for abolitionist consumption: 

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this gov- 
ernment cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I 
do not expect the Union to be dissolved, but I do expect it will 
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. 
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of 
it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that 
it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push 
it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old 
as well as new, North as well as South. 

The last part of this paragraph veils the radicalism of the 
first part of it and makes of the whole what many Henry 
Clay Whigs even in the South hoped. The idea presented 



20 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [434 

in the above quoted paragraph to the effect that the advo- 
cates of slavery intended to push slavery forward into the 
northern states unless the system was checked and put on its 
way to ultimate extinction contained a powerful cement for 
amalgamating the heterogeneous elements of the North into 
one sectional party opposed to such extension. It was a 
trumpet call to the North to form into solid cohorts to pre- 
vent such aggression on their rights. Lincoln, it is recorded, 
gave a great deal of thought to the construction of that 
paragraph. It carried in it the future destiny of the Re- 
publican party. By that paragraph the masterful leader 
gently cut the party loose from its old Whig moorings and 
warily charted its course to the port of the abolitionists. It 
was really an epoch-making utterance. Its meaning and im- 
portance depended on the various interpretations that would 
and could be given it in different parts of the country. 1 

As we all know Douglas defeated Lincoln in the sena- 
torial election, but Lincoln saved the life of the Republican 
party by his timely and revivifying remarks. The defeat 
merely indicated to the consolidator of northern opinion 
that public opinion was not yet ready to approve the unsailed 
course which led to the port of the abolitionists, the goal he 
had provided for his party in the House-Divided speech. 
For the present it was sufficiently nourishing to the party's 

1 Sherman papers, T. Webster to John Sherman, Nov. 15, i860. An 
interview with Lincoln is recounted in this letter, which shows the 
variation of meaning possible by mere emphasis. " He (Lincoln) met 
some Kentuckians in the afternoon. They said that they had great 
difficulty to explain away his speech at Springfield, two years ago, to 
the effect that a house divided against itself cannot stand. He laughed 
and proceeded to quote it, laying no stress on the words ' permanently 
endure.' He asked the Kentuckians if that was not their opinion. Of 
course they replied, ' Yes.' ' Then,' said he, ' if you may so express 
yourselves, why may not I?' All present laughed, 'Old Abe' the 
loudest of all. He left the Kentuckians under the impression that it 
would occur some day but in the day of a future generation." 



435 ] THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 2 l 

life to have " all free " enshrined as an ultimate ideal and 
to spread the idea that the South would be satisfied with 
nothing less than " all slave." 

The interpretation which the House-Divided speech re- 
ceived during the presidential campaign of i860 varied with 
latitude and longitude. In conservative New York it re- 
ceived the emphasis appropriate for attracting the conserva- 
tive. In ultra-conservative districts and in the border 
slave states it was sought to have it taken in connection with 
all the conservative remarks that its author had ever made. 
In the abolitionist stronghold of the Western Reserve the 
first sentences of the " all free eventually " paragraph were 
strongly featured, thus gaining abolitionist support for the 
candidate. It was these same sentences which received 
emphasis in the slave states. These astute sentences were 
provocative of intense distrust of their author throughout the 
entire slave-holding section. They of the South had the 
feeling that it encouraged John Brownism. 1 The John 
Brown raid had occurred in the interim between the speech 
and the nomination for the presidency which Lincoln won 
from his party largely because of this House-Divided 
speech. It was less radical than Seward's " Irrepressible 
Conflict " and yet it was not essentially conservative. 
Many southerners were fully prepared to expect a series! 
of John Brown raids or a big John Brown raid into the 
South in the event of the succession of Lincoln to the 
administration of the national government. They were all 
more or less ready to become convinced that the opening 

1 See John C. Breckenridge's statement in the address to the Ken- 
tucky 'Legislature, Dec, 1859. "Though I am far from asserting that 
the mass of the Republican party contemplated such atrocious proceed- 
ings in Virginia, yet I assert, with a profound conviction of the truth, 
my belief that the horrible tragedy is but the forerunner of a blazing 
border war, unless the spirit they are fomenting in this land can be 
arrested by a general outbreak of conservative opinion." 



22 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [4,5 

of " the irrepressible conflict " which the Republicans be- 
lieved in would be inaugurated soon after the Black Re- 
publicans or abolitionists came into control of the federal 
government. The destruction of the domestic tranquility 
of the South was imminent. They felt that their constitu- 
tional rights were infringed by the election of a president 
by northern votes to preside over southern welfare. 
Lincoln was more than persona non grata to the most in- 
telligent classes of the South. To them he was a " danger- 
ous man." The more astute judged him to be the " north- 
ern arrow of radical fanaticism winged with conserva- 
tism." 1 

In view of the interpretation placed on the House-Divided, 
speech in the South and the blending of it with what John 
Brown had done and Seward prophesied, it should hardly 
be a matter of surprise that the presidental candidate who 
represented such an ensemble of possibilities for the South 
did not receive a single vote in ten of the slave states and 
had relatively very few in the others, which were border 
slave states and thus had a better opportunity to discrimi- 
nate between the varieties of northern opinion. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the wealth of a Rothschild could not have bought 
an electoral vote for Lincoln in any of the slave states. 

Such were the ideas current in the United States in re- 
gard to the abolition of slavery on the eve of the outbreak 
of the Civil War which has been regarded as an " irrepres- 
sible conflict." It is especially significant to note the ideas 
prevalent in the South regarding what ideas were prevalent 
in the North and to realize that it is not things as they are 
which are important in the political life of a Republic but 
things as they seem or can be made to seem. 

1 Louisz'ille Journal, May iq, i860. 



CHAPTER II 
The Nationalistic Basis of Neutrality 

Two-fifths of the American people voting on November 6, 
i860, voted for electors pledged to vote for Abraham 
Lincoln as President of the United States and three-fifths 
of them voted for electors pledged to vote against him. Of 
those who voted against him, less than one-fifth voted for 
the Breckinridge electors favoring federal protection of 
slavery in the national territories. The remainder of those 
voting against Lincoln equaled over two-fifths of the total 
vote and constituted a plurality. It is very important to 
note that this plurality voted neither for the anti-slavery 
candidate nor for the pro-slavery candidate. It registered 
itself neutral between Lincoln on the northern side and 
Breckinridge on the southern side. 

The basis of this neutrality was a desire for a peaceful 
perpetuation of the Union. The neutrals believed that the 
control of the national government by a sectional party such 
as that of Lincoln or Breckinridge was thoroughly incon- 
sistent with the principle that government derives its just 
powers from the consent of the governed. They ap- 
parently felt that " consent " necessarily should be common 
to the American people, common in the sense that the Com- 
mon Law was common to all the regions of England. If 
a sectional or geographical party gained control of the 
national administration — no matter on what issue — gov- 
ernment based on consent of the governed would be abro- 
gated for the geographical region which furnished no mem- 
437] 2 3 



24 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^g 

bership in the administration party. If the general gov- 
ernment promoted the interests of one section of the country- 
regardless of the welfare of the whole it was to be feared, 
as Henry Clay had so clearly shown, that the section, or sec- 
tions, whose vital interests were neglected would seek a 
government which would afford requisite consideration. 
For a great outcry would at once arise in the section 
totally unrepresented in the administration to the effect that 
" The North shall rule the North " or the " South shall rule 
the South," as the case happened to be. The neutrals be- 
lieved that the true standard was represented by the motto, 
" Americans shall rule America " and not by " Northerners 
shall rule America " or by " Southerners shall rule the whole 
land." Only a policy which was the greatest common div- 
isor, so to speak, of the interests of every section should be 
the policy administered at Washington. That which was 
common to the interests and wishes of the whole nation was 
national; that which zuas peculiar to one section was sec- 
tional. Obviously, any policy of one section which was 
abhorrent to the interests of another section was essentially 
sectional in character. 

Over two-fifths of the American people opposed the for- 
mation of political parties championing respectively the sec- 
tional policies of the North and the South in regard to free 
and slave labor. Such political parties would necessarily 
draw their entire membership from opposite geographical 
areas — one from the North exclusively and the other from 
the South largely. The parting injunction of Washington 
to his countrymen contained a solemn warning against the 
formation of geographical political parties because he felt 
that such parties would endanger the very existence of the 
Union. The nationalistic party policy earnestly recommen- 
ded by Washington was strictly followed by the neutrals of 
i860, but was entirely disregarded by the Republicans. 



439] THE NATIONALISTIC BASIS OF NEUTRALITY 2 $ 

However, the Republicans maintained that they were not 
violating Washington's solemn injunction. According to 
Republican logic, the fact that everybody in every section 
of the country had the privilege of voting in favor of the 
Republican candidates made the Republican party national 
and entirely eliminated its purely geographical character — 
even though it was well understood that the inhabitants of 
the southern section would refrain with unparalleled un- 
animity from voting for the northern sectional candidates. 1 
The neutrals of i860 asserted that a sectionalized treatment 
of the slavery question would produce a geographical " line 
up " that would result in a " fast gallop to perdition." 

The plurality regarded an " irrepressible conflict " be- 
tween the slave and free labor systems as the " mere non- 
sensical vagary of Lincoln and Seward with which they ex- 
posed their very small pretensions to philosophical states- 
manship." For the plurality considered Lincoln's applica- 
tion of the House-Divided-Against-Itself parable to the 
labor question as contradictory of fact. The Union based 
on consent had stood from 1776 to i860 sustained partly by 
the toil of free and partly by the toil of slave labor. It had 
grown great and prospered thus constituted. And if such 
a conflict was brewing during the twenty-five years pre- 
vious to i860 it was precisely the epoch of " unprecedented 
prosperity to both the North and the South." The founda- 
tion and preservation of the Union were not the outcome of 
harping on the differences of opinion and interests among 
the states but were the result of the emphasis which its 

1 See Lincoln in Cooper Union speech. " You say we are sectional. 
We deny it. We get no votes in your section. The fact is substantially 
true. . . . Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning 
against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. 
. . . We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to 
you, together with his example, pointing to the right application of it." 



26 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 \^ 

founders and preservers had continually placed on the com- 
mon purposes of the various sections. Solely by this em- 
phasis on compatibilities and on common interests had the 
thirteen original states and their territories been welded into 
a nation. If this policy were abandoned for Lincoln's, the 
kingbolt of the great Union based on consent would be 
shattered and this species of Union could not long survive 
without it. For a sectional minority to undo the mighty 
and magnificent work of Washington and Madison, of Clay 
and Webster, was traitorous to the Union because it was a 
violation of the essential principle which had made and 
preserved the United States a nation from 1776 to i860. 
For a sectional minority administration at Washington to 
propagate exclusively a sectional standard unacceptable 
and hostile to another section and thereby to forsake the 
national mean for the sectional extreme, was the greatest 
possible of political vices under a government which derives 
its just powers from the consent of the governed ; for, if a 
sectional minority put into national effect its own peculiar 
sectional policy, it would be destructive to the cardinal prin- 
ciple of American Government for the non-concurring sec- 
tions. 

In the electoral colleges the holders of the above doctrines 
did not win a plurality, much less a majority of the votes, 
because under the actual working of our presidential elec- 
toral system, the registering of the neutrals' voting strength 
was dissipated. The neutrals were handicapped by being 
divided into two groups. One of these groups was under 
the leadership of Stephen A. Douglas and the other under 
that of John Bell. 

Douglas explained the basis of his position very thor- 
oughly in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 185s. 1 He cham- 

1 Rhodes, ii, pp. 318, 319. See also, typical speech of Douglas in Fite's 
Presidential Campaign of i860, pp. 227-300. And also, a speech by A. 
H. Stephens in support of Douglas, Louisz>ille Democrat, Sept. 16, i860. 



44! ] THE NATIONALISTIC BASIS OF NEUTRALITY 2 y 

pioned the great principle of self-determination not only 
for states but also for territories. The best way to settle 
the territorial labor question which was constantly causing 
dissension whenever its settlement was discussed in Con- 
gress, was to let the people who actually inhabited the terri- 
tory settle the question for themselves in their territorial 
legislatures. He asserted that the adoption of this method 
would " secure peace, harmony and good- will " among the 
sections by removing the controversy from the halls of Con- 
gress to the western plains. Douglas announced that he 
was neither for nor against slavery. It was immaterial to 
him whether slavery was " voted up or voted down." He 
had incorporated tie great principle of self-determination 
for the peoples of the territories in the Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill. Since Kansas had adopted a free-state constitution 
he stood squarely for admitting Kansas as a free state. It 
was entirely up to the people of the territory to decide the 
question for themselves. This policy of self-determination 
(or "squatter sovereignty" or "popular sovereignty" as 
it was then called) Douglas held to be perfectly just to 
every section of the nation and, therefore, thoroughly fit to 
be adopted as a national policy in regard to slavery in the 
territories. 

It will be remembered that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 
which Douglas was the author, repealed an earlier agree- 
ment between the representatives of the North and the 
South for the exclusion of slavery from land lying north 
of the parallel 36 30'. The enactment of Douglas's 
Kansas-Nebraska measure had two major effects. 

First. It gave the southern slave-state politicians a 
chance to manufacture another slave state and to bring two 
more Senators into the United States Senate from a state 
not hostile to the slave labor system. Up to 1850 there had 
been an equal number of free and slave states. By i860 



28 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 r^ 2 

the balance had been destroyed. There were then 18 free 
and 1 5 slave states ; thus there were six more senators from 
free than from slave states. Nobody understood any bet- 
ter than Jefferson Davis and the other southern representa- 
tives what the steadily increasing free-state majority meant. 
They realized that no more slave territories meant no more 
slave states and that no more slave states meant that the 
balance in the Senate was hopelessly upset and that the 
southern senators would be utterly powerless to check 
hostile legislation by the veto of the Senate as formerly. 
Therefore, self-determination for the slave states them- 
selves was thus in danger. However, the Kansas- 
Nebraska measure failed to produce the result so much 
desired by the southerners who helped Douglas to 
pass it — even though the most desperate efforts were made 
by the southerners, abetted by President Buchanan, to nul- 
lify the will of the Kansans and bring Kansas in as a slave 
state whether or no. Douglas denounced this as a fraud 
and prevented its consummation. He, himself, was in turn 
denounced by Buchanan and the southerners as recreant 
to principle and as faithless to the trusts of friendship. 
Douglas felt unable to renounce the great principle of self- 
determinaton for the territories to save the slave-state 
balance in the Senate. Douglas was applauded for his 
stand by his constituents in the North and also he retained 
a numerous following in the southern slave states. This 
action of Douglas in regard to the admission of Kansas led 
to the formation of an ultra pro-slavery party which de- 
manded federal protection for slave property in the terri- 
tories. The southerners were led to demand every iota of 
their constitutional property rights, since they saw that it 
would require a good deal more than self-determination for 
the territories to produce any more slave states. They came 
to look upon Douglas's doctrine of self-determination in 



443] THE NATI ONALISTIC BASIS OF NEUTRALITY 2 g 

the territories as but another name for free-soilism.. Thus, 
Douglas, the nationalist, was indirectly responsible for the 
formation of a southern sectional party whose purpose was 
to propagate slavery in the territories to keep the balance 
in the Senate from becoming ultimately too heavily 
weighted against the slave states. 

Second. The other great result of the Kansas-Nebraska 
measure was to call into existence a free-state party to pre- 
vent the spread of slavery into territories already consecra- 
ted to freedom by the agreement made at the time Missouri 
was admitted to the Union. Thus, Douglas, the nationalist, 
was also responsible for the formation of a northern sec- 
tional party. The immediate reason for organizing this 
party of which Lincoln was the presidential candidate in 
i860, was to restore the free status of the territory north 
°f 36° 30' opened to slavery by the astute Douglas through 
the passage of the Kansas-'Nebraska measure granting self- 
determination to the territories. By 1858 dimly and by i860 
clearly, it was evident that in spite of the legal chance offered 
in the Kansas-Nebraska measure not a foot of the territory 
would become slave. Economic facts were a more certain 
prohibition than law. Qimate and soil had closed the west- 
ern territories forever to slavery. When it became clear that 
the great purpose for the existence of the Republican party 
had been accomplished with the death of slavery in Kansas, 
the Republican party leaders looked around for other reasons 
to to justify their continuation as an organization. As 
has been related in the first chapter, Seward and Greeley had 
been willing to renounce their sectional political organiza- 
tion, but Lincoln had intervened and had supplied additional 
material for party purposes by the goal he held up in the 
House-Divided speech in 1858. Douglas charged Lincoln 
with coming out on behalf of the Republican party in 
favor of uniformity of domestic institutions in the slave and 



30 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^ 

free states and with continuing the sectional agitation to the 
place where it would end in sectional warfare. Lincoln 
sharply replied to the effect that the present slavery agita- 
tion which Douglas professed a desire to settle peacefully 
was of Douglas's own rousing. Had it not been for Doug- 
las's attempt to give the slave-owners another slave state 
made from territory already consecrated to freedom there 
would be no agitation. He said that Douglas and not 
Lincoln was responsible for rousing the dormant anti- 
slavery opinion in the North, which had hitherto been satis- 
fied that the system was on its way to ultimate extinction. 
He pointed to " bleeding Kansas," where the pro-slavery 
and the anti-slavery settlers had battled for control of the 
state constitutional convention, as a sample of the peace 
which Douglas's scheme produced. 

Charge and counter charge were made as to the section 
which was responsible for the then heated controversy over 
slavery in the territories. We are reminded of the recrim- 
inations of a family row destined for the divorce court for 
settlement. Who began the quarrel is always regarded of 
great importance. But it is not necessarily the only im- 
portant point to be considered. Starting the ball a-rolling 
is never an adequate reason for not accounting the person 
who did the starting sincere in wanting it to stop before it 
entirely smashes up domestic tranquility, or any excuse for 
the second party to the quarrel giving the ball a vigorous) 
kick when the momentum from the original push is becom- 
ing exhausted. 

So much for the Douglas type of neutrality. The other 
group of nationalistic neutrals entered the campaign of i860 
under the caption of Constitutional Unionists and were led 
by John Bell. 1 They were guiltless of fomenting sectional 

1 The columns of the Louisville Journal, the leading Bell paper, are 
authoritative for this party's program. 



445] THE NATIONALISTIC BASIS OF NEUTRALITY ^ 

agitation in " any shape or form." They desired to check 
" Disunionism in the South and prostrate Abolition fana- 
ticism in the North." They belonged to the school of Henry 
Clay, the great nationalist. These old-line Whigs had af- 
filiated with neither the Republican nor the Democratic or- 
ganization since the break-up of the former Whig party. 
Great numbers of them had voted the Know-Nothing or 
Native American ticket in 1856. The Know-Nothings* 
were chiefly opposed to the exercise of so large an influence 
in American affairs by foreign-born persons and Catholics. 
They wished to stiffen the requirements for American 
citizenship. With the break-up of the Know-Nothing 
movement after its failure to make any impression on the 
policy of the government, both Republicans and Democrats 
made overtures to the politically unattached. Lincoln, him- 
self, had once been a Henry Clay Whig and the Republicans 
attracted into their fold large numbers of the former Whigs 
on the ground that the Republicans' program had been ad- 
vocated by Henry Clay. And all through the campaign of 
i860, the Republicans systematically claimed Clay and held 
out Douglas's anti-Clayism for inspection. However, the 
Clay Whigs, especially of the South, perceived a difference 
between old Whiggery and Republicanism. George D. 
Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal, and a life-long 
friend and disciple of Clay, explained the difference as fol- 
lows: 

There is not a Black Republican spot or blot on the shining 
public record of Henry Clay. Not one. Not a shadow of one. 
No, the difference between the position of Mr. Clay and that of 
the Republican party is manifest and irreconcilable. It is the 
difference between the Compromise of 1850 and the Wilmot Pro- 
viso, between the national mean and the sectional extreme, between 
peace and amity and unity on the one hand and discord and 
revenge and dissolution on the other. The difference is broad, 
distinct and undeniable. It is vital. It is glaring. It can be 



32 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 r^g 

neither erased nor obscured. There it is and all the floods of 
fanaticism cannot wash it out, nor all the webs of sophistry dis- 
guise it. 1 

The southern neutrals numbered in their ranks many of the 
large slave-owners, who were opposed to a dissolution of 
the Union and the tactics of the extreme States Rights 
school. They were inclined to think that there was, indeed, 
an " irrepressible conflict " but that it was a conflict between 
politicians and that it was likely to continue as long as the 
people of the two sections permitted their prejudices to be 
played upon for party benefit. As to an " irrepressible con- 
flict " between free and slave labor which was nationally 
injurious, they considered the announcement of such a con- 
flict " about the grossest falsehood that ever was palmed 
on a gullible nation " and that the whole national experience 
was " its complete disproof." Lincoln looked upon these 
southern unionists as " white crows." 2 

For all practical purposes the Constitutional Unionists 
were at one with the Douglas Democrats on the territorial 
slavery issue of i860. 3 They were neither pro-slavery nor 
anti-slavery for the territories then in the possession of the 
nation. Whereas, the southern Democrats (and a cor- 
poral's guard of northern Democrats under the leadership 
of Buchanan) favored wielding the powers of the national 
government for the extension of slavery- in the territories, 
and the Republicans considered this utterly wrong and 
favored the use of those powers for just the opposite pur- 
pose, the Constitutional Unionists proposed to do neither. 
They were neutral, though they recognized the right of the 
Supreme Court to adjudicate the legal questions involved in 
the territorial slavery question. But they pointed out that 

1 Louisville Journal, April 26. 1S60. 

3 Weed's Weed, vol. i, p. 606. 

1 Louisville Journal, April 13, 1S60, Oct. 31, i860, and passim. 



447] THE NATIONALISTIC BASIS OF NEUTRALITY 33 

there was no territory in i860 to which slavery could be pro- 
fitably taken. They considered it madness to rave about 
imaginary territory, when slavery could hardly occupy the 
territory it already had. Since no southern planter was de- 
prived of his emigrating privileges, and no northern man 
was deprived of any free soil, the territorial question was 
already settled. It had settled itself. They felt that the 
whole territorial slavery question which was the ostensible 
cause of the sectional agitation and the sectional bitterness, 
was a mere abstraction. 

However, it was no easy task for the neutrals of i860 
to fight shoulder to shoulder in the campaign of i860. 
The Democratic and Whig contingents were ancient 
enemies. 1 The Whigs in general, even many southern 
Whigs, had opposed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska 
measure. They saw in the author of this bill, Stephen A. 
Douglas, the immediate cause of the great wave of section- 
alism which they sought to check before it wrecked the 
Union. " Why," the Constitutional Unionists asked, " did 
Douglas unsettle the Compromise?" "For the love of 
the Union, eh? He tells us that he pledged himself to 
Henry Clay at his death bed, that he would be true to the 
dying statesman's Compromise of 1850. . . . What ia 
the Douglas Union panacea? To unsettle every peaceful 
adjustment. This is the sweet milk of concord with a 
vengeance." 2 

1 See James 0. Harrison's account in his imprinted sketches of public 
men, pp. 59-60. " They (the mass of men) could not be aroused to the 
imminence of the danger. Even conservative men of other political 
organizations would not lay aside for the time their differences on 
minor questions, and therefore they would not unite with the Demo- 
crats against the common enemy of them all. They would shrug their 
shoulders and say with the utmost complacency that they had never 
given a Democratic vote, and that should the struggle come, it would 
merely be a struggle . . . for political supremacy. . . ." 

- Louisz-ille Journal. July 11, i860. 



34 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 44 g 

An additional reason for the neutrals' inability to do per- 
fect team work in the face of the common danger, was the 
Know-Nothing record of the Constitutional Unionists. 
The Democrats, especially the northern Democrats, had wel- 
comed the foreign born into full political fellowship and 
even shared with them the spoils of office. The memory of 
the recent contest on the native American issue was still 
green and the Republican politicians and editors who hoped 
to turn the election in some places with the German vote, 
took care to refresh the memories of any who perchance had 
forgotten. 

Nevertheless, in spite of ancient prejudices and dif- 
ferences of opinion, a partial fusion of the nationalistic 
neutrals took place before the campaign of i860 was well 
under way. 1 Their common ground was a peaceful pre- 
servation of the Union with the national government under 
national control. They continually reminded the American 
people of the prophetic warnings of Washington against 
sectional or geographical parties and called upon the 
American people to lay aside their customary party predilec- 
tions " as a sacrifice on the altar of their country." The 
leaders of both groups, especially the southerners, fully ap- 
preciated the prospect before the nation in the event of a 
purely sectional party's gaining control of the national gov- 
ernment. They keenly felt that such an unwise experiment 
in the perpetuation of the Union should not be made. 
These lovers of the Union were dubbed " Union-savers " 
in derision by both the Lincoln and the Breckinridge fac- 

1 Bell papers, A. H. H. Stuart to Bell, August 23, i860; August Bel- 
mont to Bell, Aug. 9, i860; Washington Hunt to Bell, Nov. 21, i860. 
Practically all of the newspapers of the period bear witness to the 
fusion movement. The coalition was more thorough in some states that; 
others. For instance, the Yeoman (Ky.), Sept. 20, i860, states that 
" Billing and cooing takes place upon every stump in Kentucky between 
the Bell and Douglas electors." 



449] THE NATIONALISTIC BASIS OF NEUTRALITY 35 

tions. The " Union-savers " desired to rouse the nation 
to the imminence of the danger before them. If they failed 
in their attempt it would only prove of course, that human 
nature was " precisely what it was in the days of Noah." 1 
The leaders of both the sectional parties asserted that the 
election of their respective candidates meant no danger to 
the Union and both sets of leaders denied the sectional 
character of their respective parties. 2 The Breckinridge 
men had some foundation for their claim for there were 
northerners who were ready at all times to concede to the 
southerners every iota of their constitutional rights ad- 
judged them by the Supreme Court of the United States. 
This was all the so-called southern extremists asked, 
although the Republican opposition repeatedly asserted 
that the slave power contemplated aggressions on north- 
ern rights, and would be satisfied with nothing less than 
making free states into slave states. There was no state 
in the north where Breckinridge did not receive some- 
votes. Relatively the number was small but Breckinridge 
had over 6,000 supporters in Maine, nearly 2,000 in Ver- 
mont, nearly 6,000 in Massachusetts, and over 14,000 in 
Connecticut. 3 Lincoln had absolutely none in ten states of 
the Union. The Republican was the only out-and-out 
sectional party when the acid test of geographical member- 
ship is applied. The absolutely negative reaction of ten 
(practically fourteen) states to the Republican proposals 
and candidate proves conclusively that whatever else the 
Republicans might say for themselves they could not truth- 
fully say that their following was national and, therefore, 
that their party was a " national " party. 

1 James O. Harrison's imprinted sketches of public men, p. 60. " Oh ! 
this general listlessness at such a time was a sad mistake and shows that 
the human nature of today is precisely what it was in the days of Noah." 

1 Boston Atlas and Bee, Aug. 17, i860, presents a good example of the 
attitude of the Republican papers. 

3 Stanwood, History of the Presidency, p. 297. 



CHAPTER III 

The Campaign of i860 

" Party Platforms," says a sage, " are made to get off 
and on by, and not to stand on." In fact it would be a 
very unusual sight in these days to find a presidential can- 
didate standing with both feet squarely on the party plat- 
form in every section of the country. Platforms must con- 
tain, of course, some definite statements with but one 
logical interpretation, obviously meaning but one thing. 
But some planks of the platform must be so skillfully 
worded that a variety of interpretations can be logically 
given to their contents in order that as many voters as pos- 
sible may be satisfied that the party's platform is in accord 
with their opinions. For to be serviceable in winning the 
allegiance of great numbers of voters a platform must be 
elastic and plastic. Therefore, platforms contain a stock 
of general statements which nobody will challenge instead 
of the detailed and specific program which the party leaders 
intend to follow on the issue touched upon in the general 
statements. Even the general statements have point to 
them, the main object of which is to avoid alienating any 
possible support from the party ticket. The term " rotten 
plank " x has been used to designate the general statement 
variety — doubtless because it enables the politicians to fool 
some of the people of the time in regard to the party's bona 
fide program. Another method of camouflaging the actual 
policies of party leaders has been termed the " hidden 

1 The term " rotten plank " seems to have meant a plank that a can- 
didate could stand on with only one foot. 

36 [450 



45I ] THE CAMPAIGN OF I860 37 

plank," which variety is not in the ostensible platform at 
all. A " hidden plank " conceals a policy on which a 
number of the party leaders are agreed but which they do 
not deem wise or necessary to give publicity to as an in- 
tegral part of the official party program. Thus, the con- 
struction of a successful party platform requires a know- 
ledge of the likes and dislikes of the possible party consti- 
tuents. 

The party platforms of i860 bear the hall-marks of the 
successful platform. The slavery planks in the Bell plat- 
form was of the " hidden variety." The party leaders re- 
lied on the party press and orators in the various sections of 
the country to explain their intentions on this question. 
However, the Bell platform had a very concrete statement 
against sectional political parties and the deceitf illness of the 
platforms of such parties. The Douglas and Breckinridge 
platforms also had planks expressing condemnation of 
sectional political parties. The Republican platform said 
nothing derogatory of sectional parties per se but charged 
the Buchanan administration with wielding the federal 
government to promote southern sectional interests. How- 
ever, the Republican platform contained a retort to the 
charge of sectionalism hurled at it by the other parties. It 
consisted in an attack upon those who talked of disunion in 
the event of Republican success. For the southerners to 
dissolve the Union because they failed to win the election 
was declared traitorous to the most benencient form of 
government in the world, and the Republicans called upon 
the inhabitants of the northern states to rebuke and silence 
such traitors by voting the Republican ticket. From a 
tactical point of view there is much to be said for this 
method of reply to the charge of sectionalism. ' Never 
defend yourself," says the English maxim, " before a 
popular assemblage, except with and by retorting the at- 



38 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 - 2 

tack : the hearers, in the pleasure which the attack gives 
them, will forget the previous charge." l 

All the platforms professed directly or indirectly to be 
heartily in favor of the Constitution, the Union and the 
Enforcement of the Law. The territorial slavery question 
was the cause for this unanimous outburst of legal and 
patriotic fervor. The Constitution of the United States as 
the Fathers of American government had made it was the 
source of inspiration for each party's territorial slavery- 
program. Each maintained that its own particular program 
was the program which the Fathers would sanction were 
the}" still on earth to make their views known and was there- 
fore, in perfect accord with the original method pursued 
by the Fathers in dealing with the question of slavery in 
the territories. The Bell party had the best of the argu- 
ment on this point, but the Republicans, 1 especially, made 
up in zeal and plausibility of their statements what they 
lacked in historical and legal fact. " Most assuredly," 
argued the Americans (as the Constitutional Unionists or 
Bell party was often called) " under the compromises of 
the Constitution, the South has just as much right to de- 
mand the indiscriminate spread of slavery at the hands of 
the people, as the North has to demand its arbitrary check. 
While our fundamental law (the Constitution) exists, the 
question is settled in favor of neither side (arbitrarily) 
.... Yet this is the precedent which Honest Abe weaves 
into wean- platitudes to demonstrate that the example of 
our fathers is in favor of modern Republicanism. Abra- 
ham should not split the record and sit his lean person on 
the edge." 3 The extreme southern interpretation of the 

1 Wallas' s Human Nature in Politics, p. 113. 

' See Lincoln's Cooper Unicn speech for Republican views. 

'Louisziile Journal, letter of July I, i860. 



453 ] THE CAMPAIGN OF I860 yj 

Constitution was that which the Supreme Court of the 
United State, had pronounced authoritative in the dictum 

accompanying the Dred Scott decision. The Supreme 
Court is the constitutional arbiter of legal disputes in regard 
to the meaning of the Constitution. Its decision, though 
not infallible, is final, until the American people through 
a constitutional amendment change the Constitution by the 
affirmative vote of three- fourths of the states. However, 
a dictum of the Court is not the same as a decision. 
Strictly speaking, a dictum has not the force of law, but is 
an anticipator)- avowal of what the court will declare the 
law to be in case the Court has an opportunity to render a 
decision in a case involving the law declared in the dictum. 
The southern platform contained a hidden plank in re- 
gard to what some of the southern leaders would undertake 
to do if the author of the House- Divided speech should be 
elected president of the whole United States by northern 
votes, even though the election was entirely in accord with 
the forms prescribed by law. It had to be a " hidden 
plank," doubtless, because the States Rights men of the 
extreme south were not at all sure that they could persuade 
their constituents to meet the election of a purely sectional 
candidate with secession. According to the South Carol- 
inian Senator 2 who spent the summer in the mountains of 
Virginia ("which region abounded in politicians of every 
hue and from even- part of the country save New Eng- 
land") most of the States Rights men of the South were 
well satisfied that their respective states would not meet 
the election of Lincoln by secession but were likely to await 
an " overt act " of aggression, though it would then be too 
late to organize resistance. With one or two exceptions 
they all urged South Carolina to lead off and take the 
chances of dragging the others after her; and individually 

1 Hammond papers. Chestnut to Hammond, Oct 17. :86o. 



4 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 454 

the southern States Rights men promised to come to her aid 
and bring their friends. The South Carolinian thought 
that " the question is too momentous to be left to the 
urgency and decision of those in other states whose 
people have decided or will decide not to withdraw." 
Although Breckinridge, the candidate of the extreme 
South for the national presidency, was asked repeat- 
edly whether the southern Democrats contemplated with- 
drawing from the Union in the event of the election 
of the Black Republican, and although he made a speech at 
Ashland, the home of Henry Clay, expressly for the pur- 
pose of relieving himself and his party of the charge of con- 
templated disunion, he did not answer the question. He 
made, however, a powerful presentation of the essential 
principles of American government, which derived its just 
powers from the consent of both the North and the South, 
and he emphasized the function of the Supreme Court under 
our system. He asserted that there were not over fifty dis- 
unionists per se in the South and that he was in favor of 
the Union and the Constitution as the Fathers had drafted 
it : and declared himself intellectually convinced that no 
political party had the right to usurp the function of the 
Supreme Court. 

The neutrals preached throughout the South that the 
election of Lincoln would not be a sufficient cause for se- 
cession, and also that the South should vote against the 
southern sectional candidate and thus hold out an olive 
branch to the North. They pressed very vigorously the 
accusation of disunionist intentions on the part of the ex- 
treme southern Democrats. The election in the slave states 
turned largely on the above mentioned campaign argu- 
ments of the neutrals. As a result the neutrals had a 
majority in eight of the slave states, Virginia, Kentucky, 
Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, Tennessee, Georgia and 



455 ] THE CAMPAIGN OF I860 4I 

Louisiana ; and they received over 45 per cent of the vote in 
three of the others, North Carolina, Arkansas and 
Alabama. 

The neutrals even accused the southern Democrats of 
engineering a split in the Democratic party for the purpose 
of making possible the election of Lincoln and thus getting 
an excuse for secession. This accusation is without ade- 
quate foundation; for, if the entire opposition to Lincoln 
had been united on one candidate, the electoral college 
would still have given Lincoln the presidency, regardless of 
the fact that the popular vote against him was a million 
more than that for him. The system of electing the pre- 
sident made it impossible for the result of this election to 
register the choice of the American people. More than one 
American of that day doubtless felt tha*t the manipulation 
of the constitutional machinery of election by a sectional 
league such as the Republican party was felt to be, was, 
" while regular in form, a fraud upon the Constitution and 
utterly subversive of its spirit." l 

In the northern free states there were several issues which 
contained vote-winning qualities beside that of the territorial 
slavery question. Doubtless one of the points on which 
the election turned was the conviction that the hidden plank 
in the southern platform lacked authoritativeness. Breck- 
inridge's Ashland speech was widely quoted as declaring 
that the southern party was no Disunion party. How- 
ever, Breckinridge had not said that the South would not 
consider the election of Lincoln cause for disunion. He 
maintained that the South was for the " Union and the 
Constitution " not as a sectional party interpreted it but as 
the Supreme Court interpreted it. The turning point seems 
to have been in the North on the fact that the northern people 

1 Bell papers, Washington Hunt to Bell, Nov., i860. 



42 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^ 

could not be convinced that the election of Lincoln by a north- 
ern sectional party would be considered a just cause for 
secession by the southern people. The only alternatives in 
the event of secession were either dissolution of the Union or 
the rejection by the North of consent as the essential prin- 
ciple of government in so far as the seceding states were 
concerned. Given secession as a fact, the gist of the 
matter was then : " Were the northern people willing either 
to sacrifice the union or to engage in civil war (accepting 
force as the essential principle of government for the 
South), for the sake of making a declaration in favor of 
freedom in the territories where freedom was to exist any- 
way by the law of nature?" Thus, the northern people 
were called upon to consider not only whether they were in 
favor of a declaration of freedom in the territories, but also, 
to decide how badly they wanted to make such a declaration. 
The Republican platform contained a " rotten plank " on 
the main point at issue, namely, what the party would do in 
case of secession. This plank consisted in a quotation from 
the Declaration of Independence in regard to the inalienable 
rights of man, and to a government's deriving its just 
powers from the consent of the governed. This quotation 
was incorporated to gain the allegiance of the abolitionists 
whom Lincoln had held out hopes to in the House-Divided 
speech and whom Seward had catered to in his " Irrepres- 
sible Conflict " oration. It was understood to have re- 
ference to including the negroes within the scope of the 
liberty mentioned among the inalienable rights of man. 1 
In addition to the quotation from the Declaration, the plank 
also contained the following clause : " That the Federal 
Constitution, the rights of the States and the Union of the 
States must and shall be preserved." This clause wast 

1 Rhodes, vol. ii, pp. 230, 463, 464. 



457 j THE CAMPAIGN OF I860 43 

doubtless tacked on for conservative consumption and was 
calculated to quiet any nervousness caused by the incorpora- 
tion under such peculiar circumstances of the quotation 
from the Declaration. However, it is impossible to re- 
concile the first and last parts of the plank, if both parts 
were to be carried out as the party's program. If the Re- 
publicans embraced the negro under the Declaration, they 
would have to violate the recognized rights of the southern 
states. If they preserved the rights of the states intact, 
ihey would have to forego their intention to expand the De- 
claration to embrace the negro. It was thus impossible for 
the candidate to stand on this plank with more than one 
foot at a time. 

Furthermore, the " rotten " plank's use of the words of 
Andrew Jackson in regard to the preservation of the union 
of the States, suggested to the uninformed, and doubtless 
led them to conclude, that the discontent in the South 
over the Republican policies of i860 could not be greater 
than the discontent at the time when Jackson used the 
words " must and shall be preserved " in regard to the 
union of the states when South Carolina nullified the 
federal tariff law of 1832. It so happened that in i860, 
a number of northern states had acts on their statute books, 
nullifying the federal fugitive slave law. Nullification 
and secession were both rights of a state according to the 
States Rights School of statesmen. The references to the 
preservation of the union and the rights of the States in 
the Republican platform condoned the nullification of the 
northern states and at the same time condemned that of the 
southern states. Evidently the party leaders had a number 
of purposes in mind when writing this plank, but chief 
among them was a desire to assist in the election of Lin- 
coln. Nevertheless, the plank lacked precision. It made 
no definite statement in regard to the most vital point 



44 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 -g 

involved in relation to the whole subject with which the 
plank dealt, namely, what program the Republican adminis- 
tration would pledge to embark upon in case the southern 
states did secede from the Union upon the election of the 
northern sectional candidate. 

The neutrals made the most strenuous effort to enlighten 
the northern voters as to the distrust of a northern sectional' 
president which permeated the entire South and to induce 
the Republican leaders to make some clear-cu!t acknowledg- 
ment of the seriousness of the consequences which might 
easily result should the southern leaders execute their re- 
solves in the event of the election of a president with irre- 
pressible conflict proclivities. They tried to demonstrate to 
the northern voter how easily it would be for the southern- 
ers to conclude that the election of a president of the above 
mentioned type by a sectional league, in itself, constituted 
a partial denial of the full right of self-government to the 
southern whites. They tried to convince the northern 
voters that what Burke had said of the American colonies 
applied with equal force to the people of the southern slave 
states at this time, namely: " In other countries people more 
simple and of less mercurial caste, judge of an ill principle 
by actual experience. Here [in America] they anticipate 
the evil, and judge of the purpose of the grievance by the 
badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a 
distance, and snuff tyranny in the tainted breeze." 

The Republican leaders sought to convince the northern 
voter that there would be no just cause for secession in the 
event of the election of the sectional president : that the 
southern leaders were only bluffing and were trying to in- 
timidate the northern voter into voting against the dictates 
of his conscience. Seward, the author of the " Irrepres- 
sible Conflict " oration, explained that " the South would 
never in a moment of resentment expose themselves to war 



459 ] THE CAMPAIGN OF I860 45 

with the North while they have such a great domestic pop- 
ulation of slaves ready to embrace any opportunity to assert 
their freedom and inflict revenge." x He further explained 
that the election of Lincoln would terminate the conflict 
which he had prophesied — not begin it. 2 " Vote for us," 
he cried, " and you will have peace and harmony and hap- 
piness in your future years." 3 And again he said, " When 
the Republicans are in office, what may we expect then ? . . . 
I answer, " No dangers, no disasters, no calamities .... 
All parties and sections will alike rejoice in the settlement 
of the controversy which has agitated the country and dis- 
turbed its peace so long." i However, the New York 
Herald openly accused Seward of " pussyfooting." Se- 
ward, it asserted, was " a moderate anti-slavery man at 
Detroit, a radical abolitionist at Lansing, a filibusterer at 
St. Paul, and the Brother Seward of John Brown did not 
hesitate to claim to be a good conservative. Union-loving 
patriot in New York." 5 The election of Lincoln, accord- 
ing to Salmon P. Chase, another of the Republican leaders, 
would mean a restoration of the old days of concord and 
good will between the North and. the South, " Tranquility, 
liberty and Union under the Constitution." 6 Greeley, the 
Republican editor whose paper had the largest circulation 
of any paper in the United States, solemnly assured his 
readers that the election of Lincoln would be " like oil on 
troubled waters and would promptly remove all sectional 

1 Black's Black, pp. 141 -142. 

1 Seward's speech at Chicago, Oct. 3, i860. 

3 Seward's speech at St. Paul, Sept. 18, i860. 

* Seward's speech at Dubuque, Iowa, Sept., i860. 

& New York Herald, Nov. I, i860. 

6 Chase's speech reviewed in New York Evening Post, in editorial en- 
titled " What the Republicans will do when they get the power," Aug. 
25, i860. 



4 6 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 6 Q 

excitement." And the National Republican Executive 
Committee closed its last appeal for votes as follows : " We 
earnestly exhort you to renewed and unceasing efforts until 
triumph is complete — a triumph which is only desirable be- 
cause it will bring peace and prosperity to the country and 
to the world." x Carl Schurz, whom the newly arrived 
Germans followed and whom he usually addressed in their 
own tongue, explained to one of his audiences that a dissolu- 
tion of the Union by the South was impossible for several 
reasons. Among these reasons were the weakness of the 
South, their divisions among themselves, the danger from 
their own slaves and their own cowardice. He said that 
there was no danger of secession. " There had been two 
overt attempts already — one, the secession of the Southern 
students from the medical school at Philadelphia, which 
he ridiculed abundantly; the second, upon the election of 
Speaker Pennington, when the South seceded from Con- 
gress, went out, took a drink, and then came back. The 
third attempt would be, he prophesied, when Old Abe should 
be elected. They would then again secede and this time 
would take two drinks but come back again." It was re- 
ported that these sarcasms were received with a roar of 
deafening shouts by a New England audience. 2 

Matters, other than slavery and secession, came in for 
a share of the attention in the North. Greater prosperity 
was desired at that time, especially by the ironmongers of 
Pennsylvania and other manufacturing districts who wanted 
a protctive tariff to assist in recouping recent financial 
reverses. The Democrats refused to incorporate a pro- 
tective tariff plank in their platform, although it was known 
that they would have little hope of carrying Pennsylvania 

1 Dated Astor House, Oct. io, i860, published in New York Tribune, 
Oct. II, i860. 
'Account published in the Yeoman (Ky.), Dec. 15, i860. 



461] THE CAMPAIGN OF I860 ^ 

without a promise of protection to the iron interests. 
The Republican platform contained a protective plank and 
the benefits accruing to certain northern manufacturing dis- 
tricts from the adoption of this policy was sufficient in itself 
to secure their allegiance to the Republican candidate re- 
gardless of the slavery question. After secession had actu- 
ally taken place and Mr. Lincoln was on his way to Wash- 
ington for inauguration, he stopped at a few strategic places 
in Pennsylvania and assured the tariff-loving inhabitants 
that whatever else Republicanism might mean it meant a 
beneficent protective tariff. 1 It did not seem to occur to 
him when he arrived in Pittsburgh that any other matter at 
that time should take precedence of the tariff. 

Plain honesty was also of prime importance as an issue in 
the presidential campaign of i860. President Lincoln 
afterward said that he owed all he was to his reputation for 
honesty. Senator Grimes of Iowa, felt that the Republican 
triumph of i860 was due more to Lincoln's reputed honesty 
and the known corruption of the Democratic administration 
at Washington than because of the territorial slavery ques- 
tion. He wrote as follows to Senator Trumbull of Illinois, 
just after the result of the election became known : " We 
have in our party as corrupt a set of d — Is as there is in the 
world — known of all men to be so, who will be the fiercest 
to secure places of responsibility and value. Now our 
triumph was achieved more because of Lincoln's reputed 
honesty and the known corruption of the Democrats than 
because of the negro question. Our President I hope will 
remember this." 2 There is ample reason to believe that 

•Speech at Pittsburgh, Pa., Feb. 15, 1861. The opening sentence of 
the speech contains the gist of the remarks : " Fellow citizens, as this is 
the first opportunity I have had to address a Pennsylvania assembly it 
seems a fitting time to indulge in a few remarks on the important ques- 
tion of the tariff." 

* Trumbull papers, Nov. 13, i860. 



4 8 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 6 2 

Senator Grimes was not exaggerating the importance of the 
honesty of Honest Abe as one of the deciding factors in 
the presidential contest of i860. 1 The Covode Committee 
appointed by Congress to investigate the Buchanan admin- 
istration's conduct of public affairs had presented a damag- 
ing report in plenty of time to be thoroughly circulated all 
over the North. The New York Tribune published the 
report of what would now be called the Republican " Smell- 
ing Committeee " and stated that " so startling an exposi- 
tion of corruption in high places was never before sub- 
mitted to the American people." 2 The report was ex- 
tremely partisan in its nature but with enough truth to 
make it extremely effective campaign material for the Re- 
publicans. The obvious conclusion was that a change of 
party was imperatively needed at Washington. The Re- 
publican papers during the entire campaign and the Consti- 
tutional Unionist papers up to the time of their fusion with 
the Douglas Democrats, gave a great deal of attention to 
the lack of integrity of the Democrats. 

1 See Chase papers, Nash to Chase, April 9, i860. " Now there were 
certain things honest men were tired of, disgusted with. One of these 
was a mere partisan administration. Partisanship has corrupted all the 
avenues of office and all comers of the government, so much so that a 
Demoorat said to me, an honest account could not be passed at Wash- 
ington unless paid for. . . . Men hoped for better things, had rejected 
Democracy for this reason, etc." 

See also Crittenden papers, Reed to Crittenden, Jan. 17, 1861. "Mul- 
titudes voted the Republican ticket because we wanted honesty to dis- 
place corruption. We do not hesitate to say we prefer the non-exten- 
sion of slavery but we are not so immovably tenacious of this principle 
as to insist upon it literally in the face of civil war." And also a letter 
of Jan. 16, Spoford to Crittenden. 

See also Lamon's Lincoln, p. 460. Lincoln said : " All that I am in 
the world — the Presidency and all else — I owe to that opinion of me 
which the people express when they call me ' Honest Old Abe.' Now 
what will they think of their honest Abe when he appoints Simon Cam- 
eron to be his familiar advisor." 

'New York Tribune, June, i860. 



463] THE CAMPAIGN OF I860 49 

The partial fusion of the nationalistic neutrals took place 
toward the middle of the summer when it became under- 
stood that the secession movement was really scheduled to 
take place in the event of Lincoln's election. The only hope 
of the fusionists seems to have -been to throw the election 
into the House of Representativies by preventing Lincoln 
from gaining a majority of the electoral votes. In case 
they could accomplish this it was calculated that John Bell, 
the Unionist nominee, would be most likely to be the suc- 
cessful candidate. 1 The political complexion of the Senate 
guaranteed the choice of Joseph Lane, the running mate of 
John C. Breckinridge, as vice-president. If the House 
failed to make a choice for president then Lane would suc- 
ceed to the presidency. Unfortunately for the cause of 
fusion in the North, Lane was the choice of the Buchanan 
administration and this administraion was unpopular 
throughout the North not only on account of the revela- 
tions of the Covode Committee but also on account of its) 
record in attempting to bring in Kansas as a slave state when 
the Kansas had voted a free-state Constitution. Herein lay 
the greatest weakness of the fusion movement because the 
northern voter keenly felt that Lane was as sectional a can- 
didate as Lincoln — they could not see the point in renounc- 
ing the northern sectional candidate by voting the fusion 
ticket and thereby bringing about the election of Lane in 
the Senate. 

The Republicans contrived to associate the idea of cor- 
ruption with the fusion movement also. After a fusion 
ticket had been adopted in New York, Greeley filled the 

1 Apparently, if the election went to the House of Representatives, 
Bell had the best chance of election. He was the least objectionable of 
the opponents to the partisan followers of the other three. For the 
same reason that Pennington won the speakership in 1859, Bell would 
have been likely to have won the presidency in i860, had the election 
been thrown into the House. 



5 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 6 4 

columns of the Tribune with " righteous indignation " at 
the " fraud." The frustration of the fusion movement was 
vital to the success of the Republican candidate. The 
Tribune bristled with such phrases as " humbug," " shallow 
and transparent humbug," " enormous humbug," " nasty 
intrigue," " swindle," " cheat," " corrupt bargain and 
sale " with reference to the fusion of the nationalistic 
neutrals. " The mellow voices of the Know-Nothings are 
to mingle with the rich Irish brogue and sweet German ac- 
cent around the wooden pillars of Tammany Hall," the 
Greeley paper announced and proceeded to denounce the 
leaders of the! movement as " truckling politicians and 
knavish schemers," and as " shallow and tricky derna- 4 
gogues." " The fusion," the paper asserted, " was one of 
politicians and not of the people " and " the mistake of the 
wireworkers inheres in their forgetting that 'the People are 
honest and earnest." Bragging and lying, according to 
Greeley, were the chief weapons of the coalition. A mil- 
lion dollars had been raised to buy up the people of New 4 
York but the Tribune held that it was " the inalienable 
right of white men not to be sold without their consent." 
The purpose of the coalition was to sell the Bell men to 
Douglas, this astute paper discovered, and then deliver 
them bound hand and foot to Gen. Joe Lane. For, the pur- 
pose of the coalition was manifestly to defeat the will of the 
People by throwing the election into Congress. This 
would undoubtedly result in the election of Joe Lane in the 
Senate, declared the great Republican editor, and the Re- 
publican press all over the North made it appear very vividly 
and emphatically that the fusionists were being made a cat's 
paw for Joe Lane'e chestnuts. And it demonstrated again 
and again that Lincoln was the only candidate who had 
a chance of receiving a majority vote in the electoral col- 
lege which the Republican press treated as a synonym for 



465] THE CAMPAIGN OF I860 $1 

" the People." It also showed that the only chance of the 
opposition was to throw the election into Congress, which the 
Republicans felt would produce a " carnival of faction " 
and a " deep and injurious agitation of the whole country " 
and finally would result in the election of Joe Lane by the 
Senate, who would " perpetuate and intensify the evils ex- 
perienced under the administration of Mr. Buchanan." 
Thus, Greeley and the other Republican editors proved that 
there was no middle ground possible between Lincoln and 
Lane, an honest Republican and a corrupt Democrat. They 
made it appear that it was necessary to swallow Lincoln 
to avoid Lane. 1 Nor did they neglect to point out that the 
coalition was trying to cheat the Irish and the Germans 
who would not knowingly vote for a Know-Nothing, while 
at the same time the coalition was trying to make believe 
that " the Douglas men would go snacks with the debris of 
the defunct Know-Nothing organization." 

In spite of the chorus from the Republican press, the 
nationalistic neutrals continued to call upon the average 
American voter to steer the ship of state between the Scylla 
and Charybdis of northern and southern sectionalism. The 
neutrals won a majority in eleven states. Only three of 
these were free states, but the fact that they received over 
49 per cent of the vote in Illinois, over 48 per cent of the 
vote in Indiana, over 47 per cent in Pennsylvania and Ohio, 
over 46 per cent in New York and over 45 per cent in Iowa, 
indicates that there was no such thing as a solid North on 
the territorial slavery policy advocated by the Republican 
party. The heavy nationalistic neutral vote in the South 

1 The Lincoln or Lane point was tremendously stressed, as the files 
of the Republican newspapers amply testify. See Boston Daily Adver- 
tiser, Nov. 1, 2, 3, and Oct. 31 ; New York Evening Post, Aug. 28, Sept. 
29; New York Tribune, Aug. 1, July 25, 30, 23, Sept. 20, 27, Oct. 4; 
Cincinnati Commercial, July 28, Oct. 6, 24; Worcester Spy, Oct. 3 and 
10; Hartford Courant, Aug. 20, etc. 



5 2 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 6£ 

indicated that the solid South was certainly not bent on 
spreading slavery into the territories — much less into the 
free states. It indicated even, that the South preferred the 
Union without slavery eventually to slavery without the 
Union, for neither Douglas nor Bell held out any hope for 
another slave state. In the face of this vote it is folly to 
assert that the southern people were aggressively pro- 
slavery and bent on maintaining slavery at any cost. It is 
also impossible to conclude, when one takes into considera- 
tion the arguments and statements stressed by the Repub- 
lican orator and press during the campaign, that the Re- 
publican administration received instructions to so conduct 
itself before and on entering office that a war on behalf of 
the negro would inevitably resutt. 

Very few southerners took northern newspapers and very 
few northerners took southern newspapers and so it hap- 
pened that a really dangerous situation existed. George 
D. Prentice of the Louisville Journal wrote Lincoln on 
October 26, requesting him in the event of the success of 
the Republicans in the electoral colleges to write a letter set- 
ting forth conservative views and intentions. Prentice pro- 
mised to publish such a letter in the Journal, the paper which 
had the largest circulation of any one paper in the slave 
states. Prentice's purpose was to check the agitation which 
he felt so certain to break out in the South as soon as the 
victory of the Black Republican became positively ascer- 
tained. Lincoln made a very astute reply to Prentice, refer- 
ring Prentice to the already published speeches for his " con- 
servative views and intentions." 1 Unfortunately the aver- 
age southerner felt that if the published speeches of Lincoln 
were to be taken before any jury, the jury would feel com- 
pelled to convict Lincoln of believing in negro emancipation 
and negro equality. 

1 Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. ii, pp. 
66-67. 



CHAPTER IV 

Government of, by and for the People 

After reading volumes of judgments on the wrong of 
secession, now, when the smoke of battle has somewhat 
cleared away, and after reviewing the evidence from which 
these judgments were drawn, one is gradually forced to 
conclude that the secessionists have been denied justice at 
the bar of history on one point at least. The great his- 
torian of the period withholds absolution from the south- 
erners when he declares that secession was a precipitate 
movement to break the bonds of union with states whose 
offence lay in the declaration that slavery was wrong and 
should not be extended. 1 Doubtless at the time secession 
was taking place many northern conservatives who voted 
for Lincoln felt that such was an accurate and complete 
account of the secession movement. But acceptance for 
the absolute truth of so simple an estimate as that which 
was native to the northern conservatives who voted for 
Lincoln, is, politically speaking, a trifle naive. Inasmuch 
as the majority of southern people had voted for Douglas 
and Bell in the presidential election and thereby signified 
that they did not care whether slavery was or was not ex- 
tended, or what the Republicans thought and declared about 
slavery, so long as they did not interfere with the labor 
system and civilization of the South, the historian's ex- 
planation cannot apply to the majority of southerners. And 

1 Rhodes, vol. Hi, p. 117. 
467] S3 



54 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 6g 

obviously no statement which does not include a considera- 
tion of the majority is an accurate account. As to secession 
being precipitate, secession had been deliberated upon for 
years, 1 Senator Hammond of South Carolina, had taught 
that union with the northern states was a " policy" and not 
a " principle." 2 It is perfectly true that the northern people 
were unprepared for the secession of South Carolina — 
much less, for that of the other southern states; for they 
had been solemnly assured by their trusted leaders that the 
South was bluffing. Therefore secession seemed precipi- 
tate to them; but as a matter of fact the discussion pre- 
ceding South Carolina's action was of such length as to 
give it the character of mature deliberation. Actual seces- 
sion and the organization of the southern confederacy 
could hardly have been executed by hot-headed school boys 
on the spur of the moment as the word " precipitate " im- 
plies. Under the circumstances secession may have been 
unwise but it can hardly be termed precipitate. 

It is apparent that the people of South Carolina were the 
only people of any of the southern states who thought that 
the election of Lincoln was sufficient cause in itself for 
breaking the bonds of the Union. South Carolina was the 
home state of what may be termed the secessionists per se. 
This group, comparatively small in number as compared 
with the whole southern people, had come to believe that it 
was to the permanent interest of the Gulf States at least, if 
not of all the slave states, to be under a separate government 
from the northern states. General incompatibility, arising 
from a difference in geographical location, with its attendant 
difference in commercial interests, and from a difference in 
opinion in regard to the appropriate condition of the 

1 That is to say, secession in South Carolina. 

* Hammond papers, Hammond to Simms, July io, i860. 



469] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 55 

negroes, was the underlying basis for the South Carolinians' 
desire for divorce from the manufacturing states and espec- 
ially from the state of Massachusetts, the home of Charles) 
Sumner. The following resolutions suggested by Senator 
Hammond give the inflammatory argument of the South 
Carolinan secessionists who promptly seceded from the 
Union when the news came that a Black Republican had 
been constitutionally elected president of the United States 
of America: 

Recent events having placed the Chief Power of the Federal Gov- 
ernment in the hands of a Party, Organization, League, perhaps 
most accurately to be denominated a conspiracy which is purely 
sectional and entirely confined to the non-slaveholding states of 
this Union, and which has beforehand through all its leading 
organs declared that between said states and the slaveholding 
states there is an " irrepressible conflict," which has proclaimed 
that its purpose is to exercise all the power of the government to 
the restriction and extinction of African slavery in the United 
States and territories : which has already before getting into 
power, instigated war and has actually carried it on with arms 
and bloodshed, with incendiary torches and poison, all brought 
to bear fatally and extensively upon a peaceable and unoffending 
people reposing for the most part with entire good faith upon the 
guarantees of a common constitution and the pledges of a most 
intimate alliance; which scoffs at our complaints of these unjust 
and unconstitutional assaults upon our rights and interests and in- 
human and fiendlike war upon our households and hearthstones, 
on our wives and daughters and ourselves, etc. 1 

As has been stated the South Carolinians were the only 
people who were thoroughly convinced that the time had 
arrived for a dissolution of the Union. Nevertheless, the 
secession of South Carolina took place with the advice and 
consent of leaders from other states, both slave and free. 
Undoubtedly these leaders knew that the whole north was 

1 Hammond papers, Hammond to Hayne, Sept. 19, i860. 



56 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^y Q 

not abolitionized ; but undoubtedly the irrepressible conflict 
proclivities of the President-elect and the " rotten " plank 
in the Chicago platform gave them great uneasiness for the 
future. In treating of secession historians have the habit of 
eliding the significance of the " rotten " plank in the Chicago 
platform. But it cannot be assumed that the southern 
leaders were not aware of the full possibilities of that plank. 
They had no guarantee that the policy of the President-elect 
who had annexed an abolitionist wing for flight into office 
would not be controlled by the radical wing of the party. 
They had no confidence in Lincoln's good intentions to- 
ward the southern people for they had reached the con- 
clusion that any intelligent person who asserted, as Lincoln 
had asserted, 1 that Jefferson had the negroes in mind when 
he wrote the Declaration of Independence, belonged in the 
class of mischievous agitators, so obvious was it to them 
that Jefferson fully recognized the existence of African 
slavery. The John Brown raid was fresh in the memory 
of the southern people and needless to say the southern 
people were hardly in a position to look upon the " rotten " 
plank in the Chicago platform with the same complacency 
and simple faith which the northern conservative exercised 
while interpreting it. 2 

However, the public opinion of the world today ap- 

1 Rhodes, vol. ii, p. 230. 

2 See address of John C. Breckinridge before the Kentucky Legisla- 
ture, Dec. 21, 1859. " The danger springs from the character and pur- 
poses of a political organization in this country called the Republican 
party, what it intends, and the probable consequences of its success in 
the United States. ... At first it seemed to limit its aims to the exclu- 
sion of slavery from the Territories ; but, like all aggressive organiza- 
tions, its course has been continually onward. The rear rank of the 
Republican army marches up and encamps on the ground occupied by 
the advanced guards months before, while the advanced guard has been 
marching steadily forward." A pamphlet in the James O. Harrison 
papers contains this address. 



47 1 ] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 57 

parently justifies the Civil War because the Declaration of 
Independence portion of the " rotten " plank of the Chicago 
platform was summarily incorporated as a bona fide part of 
the Republican party's program. The notion that one can- 
not do right in the wrong Way is now applauded in connec- 
tion with the consummation of liberation at the point of 
the sword, a process which was very nearly the equivalent 
of a huge John Brown raid into the southern states. The 
public of today has apparently reached the conclusion that 
the civilization which produced Washington, Jefferson, 
Patrick Henry, Madison, Clay, John Marshall and Robert 
E. Lee, was too unutterably brutal to be permitted to 
adjust itself to modern conditions and deserved to perish 
by the sword. It is hard for the public of today to realize 
that the public of 1 860-1 861 had an entirely different opin- 
ion. It did not occur to the mass of northern people of 
that day that the precipitate abolition of slavery in the 
southern states would be profitable even to the negroes them- 
selves. 

There is no evidence to show that the American people 
of that day, not only the Americans who lived in the slave 
states, but also the vast majority of Americans who lived 
in the free states, thought the negro capable of skipping over 
the tendencies which the white man had derived from 
thousands of years of his self -developed civilization, and 
passing with a few years training or without a few years 
training, from the mental condition and inheritance of bar- 
barians and slaves into full equality with the free citizens 
of a self-governing republic, whose laws, traditions, habits 
and customs, were totally alien, far more alien than those of 
the Japanese and Chinese. The Americans of that day 
did not feel that a mere statute law permitting the negro 
to equal the white man in autonomous government could 
enable him to do so. The slave system was regarded fun- 



58 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^j 2 

damentally not as a matter of morals, of right and wrong, 
but merely as an economic arrangement which was essen- 
tially the outgrowth of an inequality and difference in in- 
heritance between the average white and black man. It is 
safe to say that all of the southerners and most of the 
northerners knew that the negroes were not a race resem- 
bling angels in ability to pass from one extreme to the 
other without passing through the middle. 

Therefore, it cannot be said that there was basic anta- 
gonism between the northern and the southern people in 
regard to the slavery question in the southern states. The 
objections of the northerners to the slave system were not 
to the slave system itself but to the by-products of the 
system. These by-products were the so-called southern 
aristocrat and the necessity for northerners to return fugi- 
tive slaves. These two items constitute the sum total of 
the real differences between the North and the South in so 
far as the negro was concerned. There can be no doubt 
that among the newly arrived immigrants and among per- 
sons belonging to the class from which Lincoln arose there 
was a special feeling that the southern aristocrats felt that 
there were but two kinds of people in the world, themselves 
and common people. The negroes seem to have felt that 
there were three kinds of people, ranking as follows : south- 
ern aristocrats, negroes and common people. However, if 
one is to judge the existence of a democracy by a feeling of 
equality among the people of a nation there is no such thing 
as democracy on earth. As to the other objectionable by- 
product, the return of fugitives, it is clear that this was 
extremely annoying to some of the good northern people, 
especially to New Englanders, who were coming to think 
of slavery in terms of Uncle Tom's Cabin and not in terms 
of the then unwritten stories of Thomas Nelson Page or of 
the sentiment depicted in " Way Down on the Suwanee 



473] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 59 

River." However, the existence of these two " feelings " 
among certain northerners did not prevent them from being 
in sympathy with the southern people on the essentials 
which constitute a nation, for, they practiced the same form 
of government, obeyed the same laws ( including the fugitive 
slave law), they took pride in a common history, they wor- 
shipped at the same altar, they used the same language, they 
read the same books (except a very few), they carried on 
an extensive and lucrative commerce with each other; in a 
word, there were more ties to bind than there were barriers 
to separate the people of the North and the South. 

If there was any really vital difference between the 
North and the South, it was on what constituted a 
sectional control of the national government. Many 
who voted for Lincoln did not consider him any more 
sectional than Breckinridge or Lane, whom the extremists 
of the South championed. They felt that if the South 
thought it proper to have Breckinridge as president, they 
could not see why it was not equally proper for them to 
have Lincoln, especially, when they had constitutionally 
elected him. 1 However, a majority of the southern people 
did not vote for Breckinridge, but registered themselves in 
favor of the two national candidates. The Republican 
leaders did not admit that theirs was a sectional party. 
Their usual reply to the charge of sectionalism was " Slav- 
ery is sectional, freedom is national." This line of argu- 
ment seems to have completely muddled the minds of many 
honest northerners on the difference between a " national " 
and a " sectional " party and control of the government. 
They failed to realize that the Republican party of i860 

1 Hammond papers, A. B. Allen to Hammond, N. Y., Jan. 22, 1861 : 
** Ninety-nine out of every hundred of my party deny in the most em- 
phatic manner that we have elected a sectional candidate. He is not 
half as much sectional as Breckinridge." 



60 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 T^y. 

answered perfectly to Washington's definition of a geogra- 
phical party against the formation of which he solemnly 
warned his fellow-countrymen in the Farewell Address. In 
view of the " Lincoln or Lane " cry of the Republican poli- 
ticians during the presidential campaign, in view of the 
desire of the mass of the northern people for an honest ad- 
ministration of the national government such as they felt 
" Honest Abe " (judging him by his nickname) would give, 
in view of the assurance given them by their trusted leaders 
and the only newspapers the majority of them read that the 
election of Lincoln would peacefully settle the sectional 
controversy, one cannot conclude that the North was sec- 
tionalized. It seems that if the question of sectionalism 
had been fairly put and frankly met by the Republican lead- 
ers, it is more than likely that the northern people would 
have given as just a decision as the southern people on the 
issue of " sectionalism " versus " nationalism." 

In view of the basic lack of antagonism between the 
southern and the northern people, it is hardly reasonable to 
suppose that a majorty of the southern leaders and southern 
people desired a permanent dissolution of the union, much 
less a war with the numerically superior North. Both of 
these solutions were derniers rcssorts. However, the 
southern people were not willing to submit quietly to a con- 
trol of the national government by a northern sectional 
league whose sense of justice (judged by the statements of 
the extremists whom the South was prone to regard as 
typical of the North) seemed abnormally well developed to- 
ward the negro but subnormally developed toward the 
southern white. Sentiment was very general throughout 
the South against living under a government controlled by 
a northern sectional league. To the southern white man, 
a government of, by and for the people most emphatically 
was not a government based solely on northern consent. 



475 ] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 6 1 

The able and vigorous campaign of the nationalists had ap- 
parently succeeded in convincing the majority of the south- 
ern people that the election of Lincoln would not be a suffi- 
cient cause in itself to render necessary such a conclusion. 
But it seemed wise to a number of southern leaders to nip 
in the bud the first attempt at sectional control of the 
national government. And accordingly the secession of 
South Carolina under the advice of other than South Caro- 
linian leaders cannot be regarded as an attempt to break up 
the union on account of the election of Lincoln/ It was! 
really an attempt to break up the Republican party and 
a continued control of the national government by a sec- 
tional league. 2 The secession of the one state was at first 
merely an emphatic protest in so far as it can be said to have 
represented southern sentiment. 

After leading off with the secession of one state the 
southerners followed this secession with the presentation 
of an ultimatum. This ultimatum was embodied in the 
Crittenden Compromise, presented to the United States 
Senate by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, one 
of the southern nationalists. The main article of the 
Crittenden Compromise was the restoration of the line 
36 30' demolished by Douglas in the Kansas-Nebraska 
measure as the dividing line between slave and free ter- 
ritory. The southern party relinquished their claim to 

1 Hammond papers, Aldrich to Hammond, Dec. 6, i860 : " Mason, 
Davis, Brown, Pugh, McQueen and several others, whose names I do 
not now recollect, all recommend the most prompt action ; they say take 
the State out at once, any delay is dangerous and may be fatal." See 
also Breckenridge's speech before the Kentucky Legislature. " The first 
duty of all those who love their country is to overthrow the Republican 
party." 

2 See " The Stratagem of the Present Excitement " in the Boston 
Atlas and Bee, Dec. 7, i860, for a northern view of this significance of 
secession, and Breckinridge papers, John C. B. to R. J. B., Jan. 30, 
i860, for a southern view. 



62 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^5 

federal protection of slavery in all of the national territories, 
if the northern party would relinquish their demand for 
prohibition of slavery in all of the territories, and the 
status quo before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
would be re-established. The effect of the Crittenden 
Compromise was of no importance in regard to the actual 
existence of slavery in the national territories where soil 
and climate effectively prohibited its profitable use. Its im- 
portance was due to the fact that its acceptance by the Re- 
publican leaders in behalf of the Republican party would 
have annihilated the Republican party. For, as a result 
of the settlement of the political controversy over slavery in 
the territories, the radical and conservative wings of the 
Republican party would have separated into its original 
discordant elements, and those whom the political sagacity 
of Abraham Lincoln had joined together would have been 
torn asunder. The southern leaders hoped to force the Re- 
publican leaders to clear up the ambiguity of the " rotten " 
plank on which they stood with only one foot. The south- 
erners calculated that, thereby, they could limit the anti- 
slavery tenets of the Republican party to the conservative 
northern ideal. It was felt that the conservative wing of 
the party and in fact, the great majority of the northern 
people would prefer the Crittenden Compromise to either 
disunion or civil war. 1 The acceptance or rejection of the 
Crittenden Compromise was to be taken as a fair test of the 
intentions of the Republican leaders, both on the slavery 
question and on the sectional control of the national gov- 
ernment. 

1 Hammond papers, Mallory to Hammond, Dec. 27, i860: "Every 
northern man I meet who is not a leader of Republicanism admits the 
justice of our complaints and the readiness of the northern people to 
provide a remedy. ... If we can stave off bloodshed we shall have a 
triumphal and peaceful conclusion to our difficulty." Mallory was one 
of the United States Senators from Florida. 



477] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 63 

The Crittenden Compromise was rejected by the Repub- 
lican party leaders. The test was fairly put and the deci- 
sion was against the South and in favor of a sectional con- 
trol of the national government. 1 As a result of this ex- 
hibition of intention to continue indefinitely to dictate the 
policy of the national government on the part of what was 
felt in the South to be a northern sectional league, six more 
southern states followed South Carolina out of the Union 
and the seven proceeded to organize a southern confederacy 
before the inauguration of the northern sectional candidate. 
With the rejection of the Crittenden Compromise, an an- 
ticipated fact apparently became an established fact in the 
minds of large numbers of persons who were not disunion- 
ists per se. The truth of the matter then in regard to the 
secession of the six states which immediately followed 
South Carolina seems to be that the rejection of the Crit- 
tenden Compromise convinced them (in the words of 
Senator Hammond) that "a party, organization, league, 
or conspiracy" had been formed to control permanently 
the national government. Disunion and civil war were 
dcmicrs ressorts to these southerners but they preferred 
both to submitting quietly to what they considered an 
abrogation of their rights. Although the rejection of 
the Crittenden Compromise gave an enormous impetus ta 
" secessionism " the people of the eight other slave states 
remained unconvinced. These remaining unseceded south- 
ern people comprised a majority of the southern people. 
They signified their intention to remain in the Union until 
some overt act of the administration which had been chosen 
solely by northern votes should prove beyond all doubt that 
the radical wing was to dominate its policy. The eight un- 

1 See Toombs' message to the people of Georgia : "The test has been 
put fairly and frankly, and it is decisive against the South." This was 
published in the southern press ; see Kentucky Yeoman, Dec. 27, i860. 



64 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 ~g 

seceded states were, of course, the border slave states, 
where northern sentiment was much better understood, and 
whose permanent interests lay in and not out of the Union 
of all of the states. 

Mr. James Ford Rhodes has proved l that Lincoln was 
responsible for the rejection of the Crittenden Compromise, 
but the Republican leaders and politicians in general op- 
posed its acceptance because it would " lay the Republican 
party on the shelf." 2 The disunion of the states was not 

'Rhodes, vol iii, pp. 158-166. 

•The disastrous effect of the Crittenden Compromise on the fortunes 
of the Republican party was a matter of common knowledge among 
the party politicians and party workers. See among the Washburne 
papers the following expressions : " A compromise which should back 
down on vital principles, would lay us out colder than a wedge " 
from Judson, Jan. 17, 1861 ; " If the Republican cause should come 
down to a compromise they never could get half in this state again " 
from Baldwin, Jan. 25, 1861 ; " We must stand firm as a party in main- 
taining and defending the principles we have contended for the past 
six years or we are 'gone up' — of this there can be no difference of 
opinion " from a worker who wanted an appointment to some foreign 
office where " the duties of office are neither arduous nor complicated " 
Dec. 20, i860; "Any other course (than standing firm) will demoralize 
the party and scatter to the winds the fruition hoped for and to be 
expected from our great victory" from Sanford, Dec. 4, i860; " Having 
conclusive proof that you are strong on your 'pins' and free from 
any spinal affection, I entreat you with all earnestness to exhort, re- 
buke, and encourage the faltering, if there are any among the Repub- 
licans in Congress, make them to understand that retreat is death, to 
advance is safety" from Nat Vose, Dec. 15, i860; "The Republican 
pulse beats high for war but a backdown to Traitors and Slavery will 
ruin our party and prospects" from Armstrong, Feb. 12, i860; "To 
yield one new guarantee to slavery will either destroy the Republican 
party or send to their political graves every Republican who lends his 
support or countenances such a course" from Armour, Dec. 21, i860; 
" Any further concessions on the part of the Republicans will be as 
fatal to them as a snake bite" from Stephenson, Jan. 15, 1861 ; "They 
say, and not without cause, that if the Republicans back down to the 
slave power now that the party shall go to smash, as you no doubt are 
well aware" from Stewart, Feb. 8, 1861. And also see among the 



479] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 65 
so important to Salmon P. Chase as the disunion of the Re- 

Trumbull papers: "My opinion is that the man or Party that yields to 
the Slave Power now will soon be consigned to political graves from 
which there will be no resurrection," from Henderson, Feb. 5, 1861 ; 
" Under these circumstances you can easily see that it is the veriest 
suicide for the party leaders to yield to the demands of the fire-eaters, 
for it can only result in their being thrown overboard without mercy, 
etc., of rending the party into a hundred wavering fragments, and by 
so doing reinstate in power the slavocracy," from Glaucy, Feb. II, 
i860 ; " We cannot believe that the Republicans in Congress are ready 
to make political martyrs not only of themselves but of their friends at 
home, and, in a word, the whole party," and " We fully believe that the 
whole thing was concocted purposely to bring about the destruction of 
the Republican party by creating strife and division among them as a 
party," from Gainco and Crow who believed that they expressed the 
sentiments of the entire party in their vicinity, Feb. 22, 1861 ; " If our 
members of Congress give up one principle which the Republican Party 
«tand upon, we are gone, hook and line," from Woods, Dec. 20, i860; 
" I repeat, do not sacrifice the party. If we suffer the principles of the 
party to be compromised away, the party is dead. We won the victory, 
it is ours," from Ramer, Feb. 7, i860; "To let down the Republican 
platform or essentially abate from its freedom character would be the 
annihilation of the party," from Talcott, Dec. 16, i860; "Kept together 
ty no great principle, we as a party would have suffered disintegration. 
We would have resolved into original and repulsive elements, and the 
leaders who would have brought that disgrace upon us would have suf- 
fered a political death from which no Archangel's trump would have 
ever awakened them," from Jewett, March 6, i860; "To compromise 
is to ruin the Republican Party, for it is to rend it asunder. . . . Let 
the leaders stand firm. . . . The party will remain a harmonious, tri- 
umphant band, ready for conflict, expectant of a long career of un- 
broken triumph. . . . The vital question for the Republican party is, 
' Will Abraham Lincoln stand firm in this trying hour ?' We answer, 
"* He will!'" New York Tribune, Feb. 8, 1861. "People have never 
"been able to believe that the secessionists were in downright earnest 
in their avowed purpose to make a new nation by cutting a few blocks 
out of the American Union. . . . The unconditional surrender of the 
Republican party is required," from Boston Atlas and Bee, March 27, 
1861. 

The greatest problem which the Republican leaders were trying to 
solve at this period was, " Cannot the Republican party preserve the 
Union and at the same time preserve itself?" The Republican leaders 
had to choose between saving the party through Civil War and saving 



66 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 g 

publican party. 1 Chase felt that if the party leaders would 
stand firm and not yield an inch to conciliate the southern- 
ers that the party stood a good chance of controlling the 
federal government for the next third of the century. If 

the Union by acknowledging that they were wrong in the premises, not 
wrong on the slavery issue, but wrong in their advocacy of sectional 
control of the national government. If the party "took up the trade" 
of peacefully saving the Union like the professional "Union-Savers" 
of the old Whig school, " it may as well go to the wall " mourned 
George Hoadly of Cincinnati to Salmon P. Chase. And the " truth " 
manifestly was, as one of the politicians wrote Washburne, that the 
whole trouble was to a great extent political, " an intention on the 
part of the Democrats to force, through fear of Civil War, the Repub- 
licans to concede so much as to practically disband the party." Said he. 
" I would see the devil have the whole South before I would vote for 
any such measure as the Crittenden Compromise." 

The great stumbling-block in the path of the southern statesmen ob- 
taining concessions from the North was that the legislatures of the 
northern states were in the hands of persons whose political life de- 
pended on their not conceding " an inch " to their adversaries. This 
situation is very clearly shown in a letter to Chase from N. B. Judd of 
Illinois, Jan. n, 1861 : "There is a severe outside pressure here for 
some (conciliatory) action by the Republicans in the legislature. Some 
of our men are alarmed at the aspect of public affairs and desire to do 
something (but do not know what they want and we have trouble in 
holding them steady. I send you some resolutions upon which I wish 
your opinion as to their effect upon the position and integrity of the 
party — and also their propriety as propositions without reference to the 
condition of the party at present. . . . The Democracy are in state 
convention today and intend to make concession an issue, with such a 
population as we have bad our small majority, there is danger for us 
ahead." The same condition is seen in the letter of E. Peck from 
Illinois to Senator Trumbull, Feb. 2, 1861 : " The proposition to send 
commissioners to Washington (to the Peace Conference called by Vir- 
ginia) was passed through the General Assembly yesterday, this was 
done as a matter of political necessity because if we had not united to 
do so, some of our knock-kneed brethren would have united with the 
Democracy and would have given them sufficient strength to have the 
resolutions appointing by the General Assembly." The resolutions gave 
the appointment of the commissioners to the Republican Governor, and 
of course they were not " knock-kneed brethren." 

1 Trumbull papers, Trumbull from Chase, Nov. 11, i860. 



4 Si ] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 67 

they compromised they felt that Lincoln would be the first 
and last of the Republican presidents. To the average Re- 
publican party politician the Crittenden Compromise and 
the secession of South Carolina, were but a scheme whereby 
the Republicans would be shortly ousted from office. 
Doubtless the party worker, who had gotten out the whole 
vote in his district and had all the unnaturalized Germans' 
to take out papers in time to vote, felt that he deserved a 
federal postmastership for life. 1 Indeed, there were some 
workers who had worked in the free soil and liberty party 
movement for twenty years and these did not feel it incum- 
bent upon them to modestly renounce the results of victory 
so soon. One after another sent in application or applied 
in person for federal office. The number of persons who 
felt that their services deserved the reward of a cabinet 
position 2 or a foreign post was considerably greater than 
the number of positions to be filled. The politicians were 
unanimously in favor of doing nothing which would sur- 
render one iota of political advantage to the party. How- 
ever, the politicians and office-seekers did not represent the 
rank and file of the party. 

The great mass of conservative voters in the Republican 
party, represented by Charles Francis Adams of Massa- 
chusetts, Thurlow Weed of New York, and Thomas Cor- 

1 " We made use of every available piece of timber, had what Repub- 
lican Germans there were naturalized, who had not previously become 
citizens and got out all the votes." Washburne papers, Nov. 17, i860. 
The author of the above quotation was rewarded with a postmastership. 

'The greatest difficulty was experienced in getting the cabinet posi- 
tions distributed to the best advantage. Cameron of Pennsylvania had 
to be included although he was persona non grata to the " holier " men 
of the party. " Can I get along," asked Lincoln, " if that state should 
oppose my administration?" Koemer's Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 114. Gideon 
Welles of Connecticut was made Secretary of the Navy for similar 
reasons, although Seward said that Welles did not know the stem of a 
boat from its stem. Oberholtzer's Lincoln, p. 188. 



68 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 g 2 

win of Ohio, besides a considerable number of others, were 
favorable to compromise. They favored some compromise, 
preferably one offered by a Republican, but they were ready 
and willing to renounce the essentially sectional character 
of their party for the sake of a peaceful preservation of the 
Union. Many a Republican understood that the trend of 
the times was against the South and that sooner or later the 
labor system of the South, for purely economic reasons, 
would have to succumb. These Republicans were even 
willing to be magnanimous and give the southerners more 
than the average northerner had been taught to believe that 
the South could justly claim. 1 It was with great difficulty 

1 William T. Sherman thought that a " declaration of no more slave 
states in advance is offensive and mischievous besides being unneces- 
sary — time enough when one applies for admission. ' Irrepressible con- 
flict' should be a Sewardism, not a party thought. To govern all the 
country, your Doctrines must be consistent with the interests of all 
parts of the country." Sherman papers, Oct. 3, i860. The following 
also shows the conservative trend of reasoning: "There were thou- 
sands and thousands of Conservative men in the North who voted for 
Lincoln, who would now yield much for the sake of peace and feel 
that they were not compromising principle thereby. . . . Every year the 
North is gaining whilst the South loses political power. Lord Welling- 
ton said that anything is better than Civil War. . . . He made conces- 
sions which his friends insisted were at variance with consistency." 
Trumbull papers, Trumbull from W. S. Gilman, Dec. 11, i860. Also 
see Trumbull from Detrich, March 2, 1861 ; Trumbull from Lansing, 
Feb. 17, 1861 ; Trumbull from Isaac Lea, Dec. 26, i860; Trumbull from 
J. M. Richard, Chicago, Jan. 18, 1861. See also Breckinridge papers: 
McDaniel to R J. Breckinridge, Jan. 21, 1861, " Majority of Repub- 
licans, not radical. . . . Three-fourths in favor of any fair arrange- 
ment " ; R. L Allen to R. J. Breckinridge, Jan. 21, 1861, "Northern 
sentiment modified and has never been a fourth as bad as represented." 
- . . Also states that " the majority of those who voted for Mr. Lin- 
coln did so with no other views than to secure an upright, conservative 
administration of our constitution and laws"; that "three-fourths at 
least, perhaps nine-tenths of the northern voters are ready to sanction 
any reasonable concession " ; and that " among the vast majority of 
the northern people the same fraternal feeling for their southern 



483] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 69 

that the radical leaders prevented William H. Seward from 
offering some adequate compromise to halt the procession 
of southern states out of the union. 1 But after Seward ac- 
cepted the offer of the office of Secretary of State under the 
incoming administration, he submitted to the leadership of 
Lincoln. 

As Lincoln clearly stated in 1863 there were but three 
conceivable courses for the Republicans to follow. 2 Either 
some compromise had to be made, or the seceding states 
had to be allowed to go in peace, or the secession movement 
had to be crushed by force of arms. With the exception 
of a small group of secessionists per se, the three-fifths of 
the American people who had voted against Lincoln were 
undoubtedly in favor of compromise. Furthermore, since 
a great number of those voting for Lincoln were also in 
favor of compromise, it can be truthfully said that an over- 
whelming majority of both the northern and the southern 
people preferred compromise to either a dissolution of the 
Union or Civil War. 3 The majority of the northern people 
were perfectly willing to meet the southern people halfway. 

brethren exists which has always existed." The great thing to be accom- 
plished according to this R. L. Allen, who had voted for Lincoln, was 
" to disabuse the South of their false opinion " : D. B. Duffield to R. J. 
Breckinridge, Feb. 17, 1861 ; S. Holmes to R. J. Breckinridge, Feb. 22, 
1861, "I hesitate not to say the great trouble is occasioned by the dust 
thrown in the eyes of the masses by wild politicians " ; L. F. Allen to 
R. J. Breckinridge, Jan. 10, 1861. 

1 " The unconciliatory and defiant course of the Republican leaders 
has rendered the advocates of patience and steadiness in the South all 
but powerless. Beyond dispute, it is the principal cause of the fearful 
distrust of the North which now possesses and inflames the Southern 
breast." Louisville Journal, Dec. 31, i860. 

1 Lincoln to Conkling, Aug. 26, 1863, published in one of the Illinois 
State Historical Society publications. 

3 Northern historians from Greeley to Rhodes acknowledge this to be 
a fact. 



7 o THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 g^ 

The election returns had shown that the southern people 
were not bent on nationalizing slavery as the political agi- 
tators had asserted for they had voted for Douglas and Bell, 
leaders who did not promise the extension of slavery into 
any of the territories. The pressure for the adoption of the 
Crittenden Compromise was enormous, especially when it 
became known that Davis and Toombs were willing to ac- 
cept it as a final settlement of the territorial slavery con- 
troversy. Monster petitions were sent to Congress praying 
the adoption of compromise or its submission to the Amer- 
ican people before war was started or any other irretrievable 
step of alienation was taken. A meeting of Boston work- 
ingmen held in Fanueil Hall petitioned as follows: 

It is the right of a free people, who are misrepresented and 
misgoverned by those in power to take counsel together for the 
redress of their grievances. 

The chief cause for the breaking of the Union is the people of 
the North and the South have been deceived and betrayed by 
politicians. 

The South has been taught to believe that the North hate them 
and are pledged to trample their rights and property ; while the 
North have been taught to believe that the South hold them in 
contempt and hatred and are united in a hostile plan of aggres- 
sion against their liberties. 

We plainly see that the ceaseless falsehoods which have misled 
the South as to our true feelings, and the rash and wicked deeds 
which are charged upon our whole people, are due to a small but 
active and unscrupulous party of Abolitionists, who have, etc. . . . 

We do earnestly appeal to all patriots, and all honest men at the 
North to pledge themselves to an unending hostility to the prin- 
ciples and plans of the Abolitionists for the following reasons : 

Because they undermine religion and openly deny the authority 
of the Holy Word of God. . . . 

Because the bells of the New England churches which the Abo- 
litionists tolled on the day of the just execution of John Brown, 
proclaimed their hatred of the Union and their sympathy with his 
wicked raid and with his murder of peaceable citizens of Virginia. 



485] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE ?1 

Because their pretended love of slaves a thousand miles away is 
but hypocrisy. If they loved mankind and would prevent sin and 
suffering and wrong, they could find here at home objects more 
than sufficient for the exercises of all their assumed virtues. But 
their philanthropy is mere deception, their affected sympathy is 
selfishness and their feigned love for the slaves a cloak for their 
insidious designs. . . . 

We are weary of the question of slavery ; it is a matter which 
does not concern us, and we wish only to attend to our own busi- 
ness and leave the South to attend to their own affairs, without 
any interference from the North. 

Only in an hour of danger do we step forward to demand and 
endorse our political rights. And now that we are obliged to come 
forward for the sake of our country, we learn with profound 
astonishment from the confession of the great party leaders that 
the question which divides and distracts the country as to whether 
slaves shall or shall not be admitted in the territories is a mere 
quarrel about an abstract opinion ; and that in ten years only 
twelve slaves have been domiciled in the territories in New Mex- 
ico. Well may the people say that they must come forward to 
protect themselves from the politicians. 

Let us not quibble about words, or stand obstinately upon slight 
differences of opinion, like our representatives who dignify their 
perverse obstinacy with the name of principle, but, disregard ng all 
other objects, unite earnestly, honestly and heartily to preserve 
the Union. 1 

In fact, petitions, letters, accounts of mass meetings from 
all parts of the country poured in praying the peaceful pre- 
servation of the Union and the avoidance of civil war. 
Assurances came to Crittenden that the Compromise could 
be carried by a 50,000 majority in Indiana, by a 200,000 
majority in Pennsylvania; that three-fourths of New York 
were in favor of it: and a petition signed by 22,213 citizens 
of 182 towns and cities of Massachusetts prayed the adop- 
tion of Compromise; 14,000 American women petitioned 

1 Crittenden papers, Feb., i860. 



72 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 4 g£ 

that " party or sectional prejudices be not allowed to pre- 
vail over a spirit of mutual conciliation; and one beautiful 
personal letter to Crittenden closed with " May God in his 
infinite mercy save the United States of America." x 

The radical wing of the Republican party which opposed 
compromise was composed of two groups. One set was for 
letting the " erring sisters " go in peace. This set was com" 
posed of the moral suasionist type of abolitionists 2 and of 
Horace Greeley, until, as one of the politicians of that day 
expressd it, Greeley was persuaded to " go the whole soap." 
This peaceable radical group felt that Civil War was about 
as bad as slavery, if not worse. The other set in the radical 
minority wing which Greeley shortly joined was the " war 
group." 4 They believed in crushing the secessionists by 
force of arms and letting the " irrepressible conflict " become 

1 Crittenden papers, passim, and especially Jay Gould to Crittenden, 
Jan. 4, 1861. 

2 This was, of course, the doctrine of the Liberator and even of the 
Springfield [Mass.] Republican. See Nov. 22, i860. This latter paper 
regretted the spending of money on arms because it prevented the 
founding of an agricultural college and aid to Agassiz's Natural History 
Museum, April 3, 1861. 

'See Greeley's American Conflict, vol. i, p. 359. And for the "whole 
soap," see Washburne papers, Nat Vose to Washburne, Dec. 15, i860. 

'The Boston Post, Feb. 9, 1861, contains the following account of the 
differences between the conservative and radical wing of the party as 
represented by the conservative Albany Journal of Weed and the radical 
New York Tribune of Greeley: "The width of the gulf between the 
New York Tribune and the Albany Journal is daily increasing. The 
Tribune intimates that the Journal is either traitor or craven ; the 
Journal asks how long it is since the Tribune insisted on a candidate 
for President who would not be obnoxious to the Border States. . . . 
The Tribune, in remarking on Seward's declaration that Republicanism 
must be subordinate to the Union question, declares that it prefers clean 
Republican principles, 1. e., the Chicago platform, to fifty unions; where- 
upon the Journal rejoins that if a choice must be made between party 
and country, we differ so widely from the Tribune as to prefer the 
Union to fifty parties." 



4 8 7 ] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 73 

a 'bloody reality. Lincoln's law partner 1 belonged to this 
group and it is hardly reasonable to doubt that Lincoln also 
preferred war to compromise or a dissolution of the Union. 
The Springfield State Journal of Illinois, edited by Lin- 
coln's nephew, was considered an authority on the views of 
the President-elect. 2 In November, just after the election, 
it announced the position of Lincoln as being that of his 
Leavenworth speech which was as follows: "If constitu- 
tionally we elect a President and therefore you undertake 
to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you 
as old John Brown was dealt with. We can only do our 
duty. We hope and believe that in no section will a maj- 
ority so act as to render such extreme measures necessary." a 
At no other period in Lincoln's career did he exhibit a 
more masterful comprehension of the simplicity of the com- 
mon man's mind than at this crisis. Lincoln skilfully re- 
frained from using the words " civil war," " coercion," 

1 The following letter from Herndon to Trumbull indicates his posi- 
tion : " This thing slavery must be met and finally squelched. Liberty 
and slavery are absolute antagonisms : and all human experience and 
all human philosophy say, ' Clear the ring and let these natural foes,, 
these eternal enemies, now fight it out. To separate them nozv is mur- 
derous to the men, women and children of the future. . . . Hurrah for 
Wade ! God bless Wade ! . . . We expect you to oppose all the time- 
serving and cowardly compromise of principle or policy." Trumbull 
from Herndon, Dec. 21, i860. Also a letter of Feb. 9, 1861, from Hern- 
don to Trumbull gives the radical point of view : " Are our Republican 
friends going to concede away dignity, constitutions, union, laws and 
justice? . . . Before 1 would buy the South by compromises and conces- 
sions to get what is the people's due, I would die to be forgotten, will- 
ingly. Let me say to you that if Republicans do concede anything more 
than the South has already got, namely, her constitutional rights — that 
you — the Republican party may consider death as the Law." 

1 Washburne papers, Washburne from A. J. Betts, Feb. 4, 1861. " The 
oft-repeated and emphatic declarations in regard to the position of Mr. 
Lincoln by the Springfield Journal (good authority on that point) I think 
should set at rest all misgivings as to the course he will pursue." 

8 Springfield State Journal, Nov. 14, i860. 



74 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 j-^gg 

or " subjugation by force of arms " to describe his method 
for allaying the southern dissatisfaction with northern 
sectional control of the national government. Instead he 
chose to call his policy an " enforcement of the law." In 
the choice of this phrasing there was a great deal of subtle 
irony as well as a profound grasp of crowd psychology. 
The term " enforcement of the law " as it was used in the 
presidential campaign of i860 had special reference to the 
Fugitive Slave Law and the Dred Scott decision of the 
Supreme Court. The " Union-Savers " strenuously advo- 
cated the enforcement of the law, as well as the Douglas 
Democrats and the Breckinridge party. " Enforcement of 
the law " had a conservative sound and carried with it an 
atmosphere of dutiful obedience to law. A great majority 
clearly favored enforcement of law in general. However, 
enforcement of the law in connection with the secessionist 
movement was exactly equivalent to civil war or subjugation 
by force of arms. A rose by any other name smells as sweet 
but the use of the words " civil war " would have roused 
antagonism to the procedure of crushing the secessionists by 
force of arms while the use of "enforcement of the law" 
created no such feeling. 1 

Lincoln, it should be carefully noted, did not state publicly 
that civil war was his chosen policy. In fact one would 
infer from some of his remarks that peace was his deliberate 
preference. But it is evident that the "peace" which he 
preferred and to which he had reference was merely the 
peace which would have resulted had the southern leaders 
refrained from challenging a sectional control of the national 
government and submitted quietly as on normal occasions 
to the choice of the electoral colleges. However, Lincoln 

'An excellent account of the magical power of the words is to be 
found in Le Bon's The Crozvd: A Study of the Popular Mind, book ii, 
ch. xi. 



489] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 75 

refrained from making unequivocally clear to the com- 
mon man, the difference between the two varieties of 
"peace." And the common man, with a mind untrained 
in the critical analysis practiced by lawyers, jumped to the 
conclusion that there was really no difference between 
Lincoln's kind of peace and his own. Therefore, the com- 
mon man approved Lincoln's " peace " policy, because in 
the excitement of the hour he naively mistook it for his own. 
When the Springfield Journal of March 4, 1861, presented 
the idea in a most remarkable editorial that a war would 
put an end to slavery " either in its immediate effects or in 
the anti-slavery sentiment it would create in all parts of the 
country," it doubtless gave an excellent clue to what was 
in the mind of the man who was being inaugurated president 
of the dis-United States on that day. This editorial seemed 
to indicate that Lincoln felt that the public opinion of the 
future could be brought to endorse his war policy and ap- 
plaud the result provided the first shot in the war was fired 
by the southerners. Taken as a whole, this editorial may 
be regarded not only, as a dare, but also, as a warning to 
the South Carolinians. It is a most marvellously accurate 
forecast of the future and demonstrates unmistakably 
Lincoln's clear understanding of the emotions of the com- 
mon man. However, if such a statement had been offi- 
cially uttered and explicitly explained by Lincoln, instead 
of being printed in the newspaper which was understood 
only by the initiated to represent the President, the com- 
mon man might have caught on to what the " peace " 
policy of Lincoln actually amounted to. 

That Lincoln was "quite belligerent" seems to have 
been well understood by those in a position to know. 1 
Kreisman, one of the Republican workers among the Ger- 

1 Washburne papers, Dec. 27, i860; Washburne from Kreisman. 



76 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 ^O 

mans (who was rewarded for his skill by a secretaryship 
to the legation at Berlin) wrote Washburne, Republican 
Congressman from Illinois, that Lincoln had said, " We 
have plenty of corn and pork, and it would hardly be brave 
for us to leave this question to be settled by posterity." 1 
This news was not intended for public consumption, but 
was merely a private tip from one good politician to another 
as to the lay of the land. 

The policy which was pursued by the Republican leaders 
was definitely outlined in a letter from Springfield, Illinois, 
to Senator Trumbull, who was understood to be Lincoln's 
spokesman in the United States Senate. It was as follows : 2 

I would then pursue a temporizing policy for the present, keep 
back out of view our distinctive party principles. Get time for 
the inauguration, if possible. Then raise the cry of the Constitu- 
tion and the Union to the exclusion of party principles. Rally all 
parties under its inspiring influence. Merge all sectional questions 
into and make them subservient to this plan, and when the smoke 
of the contest shall have passed away, the Union will be saved, the 
victory won and our principles secure. 

Though this war policy well deserves Francis P. Blair's des- 
cription of " suaviter in modo, fortiter in re," s it was not one 
to which the Republican party was pledged by any plank in 
the Chicago platform except the first clause- of the " rotten " 
plank which was merely a quotation from the Declaration of 
Independence. It is certain that the vast majority of the 
northern people who voted for Lincoln did not suspect that 
they were voting to extend the tenets of the Declaration of 

1 Washburne papers, Dec. 27, i860; Washburne from Kreisman. 

"Trumbull papers, Trumbull from Conkling, Dec. 26, i860. Conkling 
was one of the party workers who obeyed orders. He wrote a similar 
letter to Washburne and perhaps to the whole Republican brotherhood 
in Congress. 

Van Buren papers, F. P. Blair to Van Buren, March 7, 1861. 



4 g I ] GOVERNMENT OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE 77 

Independence with gunpowder to include the negro slaves in 
the southern states ; for there was another plank in this same 
platform which expressly declared against such action. 
In fact, it is absolutely certain that an overwhelming 
majority of the common American people deliberately op- 
posed engaging in a civil war in any guise to settle the 
negro question. There is no evidence to indicate that the 
Republican war group were not aware of this fact. Under 
the circumstances, there can be no doubt that they knew they 
had no mandate from the people to settle the negro ques- 
tion for posterity. So much for government of, by and 
for the people in 1861. 



CHAPTER V 

The Political and Psychological Significance 
of the Firing at Sumter 

The wishes of the American people during the months 
intervening between the secession of South Carolina and 
the opening guns of the Civil War were very emphatically 
expressed in every conceivable way. There can be no doubt 
as to what the American people expressed themselves in 
favor of during this period ; for it stands out very distinctly 
that they desired the preservation of the Union. Nor can 
there be any doubt that they preferred the peaceful preser- 
vation of the Union to the preservation of the Republican 
party. The bonds of Union before 1861 were made of 
the same stuff from which friendships are woven, a light 
and invisible substance whose texture is finer and more en- 
during than steel. The bonds of Union previous to 1861 
were entwined " with the mystic chords of memory, stretch- 
ing from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living 
heart and hearthstone." The vast majority of the Ameri- 
cans manifestly thought that this tried and true method of 
holding the states together was superior to having the states 
pinned together by bayonets. Therefore, they favored the 
adoption of the Crittenden Compromise and the peaceful 
perpetuation of the Union by methods which were thor- 
oughly in keeping with the principles of a government based 
on the common consent of the governed in all sections of 
the country. 

However, under the circumstances, a minority of the 
78 (432 



49 3] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER yg 

northerners felt it was highly desirable for the Federal 
Government to make an exhibition of its strength to test 
its power and authority. This minority favored coercing 
the seceding states. It was composed of persons with 
strikingly different varieties of motives for their preference 
for the substitution of force for consent at this crisis, which 
tested to the uttermost the capacity of the American people 
of i860 to measure up to the American people of 1787. 

Prominent in this minority were those who were to hold 
office under the Republican party and who believed that the 
southern leaders were bluffiing to ruin the Republican party. 
These politicians saw in war the sole means of preserving 
the public confidence in the Republican leaders. The more 
astute of them realized that this policy would be preemin- 
ently successful only in the event of the secessionists firing 
the first shot and they, therefore, thought a Fabian policy of 
delay in announcing a definite decision was advisable on the 
part of the Republican leaders in order to give the southern- 
ers ample time to make this fatal blunder. 1 Then, there were 
persons who felt that if the Federal Government would show 
its teeth secession would crumble to dust without much ado. 

1 Chase papers, Wright to Chase, March 7, 1861 ; Brooks to Chase, 
April 8, 1861 ; Beckham to Chase, April 2, 1861 ; Trumbull papers, 
Trumbull from Plato, March 20, 1861 ; Trumbull from Judd, Jan. 17, 
1861 ; Van Buren papers, Blair to Van Buren, May 1, 1861, and March 
7, 1861 ; Washburne papers, Washburne from Vose, Dec. 15, i860: 
" You are all right in giving the South ample opportunity to remain 
with decency and to place them fairly and visibly in the wrong before 
the civilized world," Dec. 18, i860: "If Mr. Lincoln had sent an armed 
vessel with provisions for our citizens at Fort Sumter and then if the 
Rebels had fired upon said ship, we should have a consolidated North," 
March 16, 1861. Hammond papers, Mallory to Hammond, Dec. 27, 
i860. Editorial of Springfield Journal, March 4, 1861. " Turning on 
the Light " by Horatio King, p. 184, " That the first shot in the rebel- 
lion came from the enemy was due wholly to this policy of procrastina- 
tion then so severely censured." 



80 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 494 

Montgomery Blair, Zachariah Chandler, Carl Schurz and 
quite a respectable list of northerners followed this school of 
thought which is, nevertheless, more typical of Prussia than 
of America. 1 Some of the coercing minority were con- 
vinced that the dignity of the Federal Government would be 
impaired if the secession theory as a principle of govern- 
ment were tacitly recognized by conciliating the secessionists 
whom they regarded as attempting to establish the Mexican 
custom in the United States. 2 However, a majority of the 
people, who were utterly opposed to recognizing secession 
as one of the legal rights of the states, were also opposed 
to substituting force for consent as the basis of the Union, 
and therefore favored the adoption of the Crittenden Com- 
promise and an amendment to the Constitution specifically 
declaring that secession was not one of the rights of a state 
of the American Union. Another band of the coercionists, 
small in number but great in zeal, were those who looked 
forward to civil war as the means of "melting the chains 

1 Speeches of Carl Schurz, edited by himself, p. 32. For Montgomery 
Blair's views, see Van Buren papers, Blair to Van Buren, April 29, 1861, 
and Horatio King's Turning on the Light, p. 183. For Chandler's posi- 
tion, see Trumbull papers, Chandler to Trumbull, Nov. 17, i860, and 
also Chandler to Governor Blair of Michigan, letter of Feb. 11, 1861, in 
a publication of the Southern Historical Society. Koerner's Memoirs, 
vol. ii, pp. 108-109. 

* This was the strongest point in the coercionist defense and they 
stressed it with great force. See the inaugural address of Lincoln and 
the New York Tribune's presentation of the case in the following vein : 
"The question is simply, Shall the will of the majority, constitutionally 
and legally expressed at the ballot-box, be respected, or shall we resort 
to rebellion and civil war whenever we are beaten in an election? Is it 
possible that the American people will tolerate the introduction of the 
Mexican system," etc., Jan. 21, 1861 ; and also the same theme in the 
Boston Atlas and Bee of Feb. 8, 1861, as follows: "We have elected a 
President strictly according to the provisions of the Constitution and 
the requirements of the laws of the Union. We have chosen a Presi- 
dent after the manner of Washington," etc. 



495] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER 8 1 

of human bondage." x Some of this group of fiery aboli- 
tionists were tinged with Brown's fervor, but were without 
John Brown's personal courage, for they managed to keep 
off the firing line during their holy war. 

However, many of the coercionists were doubtless actu- 
ated by a varying mixture of the above mentioned motives. 
The typical coercionist refused to yield one jot or one tittle of 
the Chicago platform as a " matter of conscience." They 
were preeminently consistent. But, when one recalls that 
what this minority refused to yield as a matter of conscience 
was the legal status of negroes in territories which would 
never contain the slave system of labor because of the 
economic conditions of the territories and that the alterna- 
tive to compromise was a dissolution of the Union or civil 
war, and when one further considers that under a govern- 
ment of, by and for the people, the will of the majority 
should be acceded to, one cannot give these conscientious 
Republicans unconditional praise for their strenuous con- 
sistency. At this far away day which is witnessing the 
dawn of universal peace, the Republican minority appear 
a trifle " over-righteous." Moreover, it has now become an 
established fact that the actual running of a government 
based on the consent o>f the governed requires that the 
political convictions of the minority must never be placed 
" beyond doubt, conciliation and compromise." 2 

1 There were a great many who felt that civil war would end slavery. 
See the Springfield Journal of March 8, 1861 ; Chase papers, Chase from 
Brooks, April 8, 1861 ; Trumbull papers, Herndon to Trumbull, Dec. 21, 
i860; Koerner's Memoirs, p. 119: Crittenden papers, Salle to Critten- 
den, Jan. 15, 1861. 

* Wallas' Human Nature in Politics, pp. 194-195. " The most easily 
manipulated state in the world would be one inhabited by a race of 
non-conformist business men who never followed up a train of political 
reasoning in their lives, and who, as soon as they were aware of the 
existence of a strong political conviction in their minds, should an- 
nounce that it was a matter of conscience, and therefore beyond the 
province of doubt and calculation. 



82 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [4^5. 

Lincoln put the best foot of the coercionist group fore- 
most l in his inaugural address delivered March 4, 1861, 
upon the occasion of his taking the oath of office to uphold 
the Constitution of the United States. Jeremiah S. Black 
had given the Republicans authoritative assurance that, if 
the Lincoln administration would pledge itself without 
equivocation to uphold the Constitution of the United States 
as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States, 
the southern states would annul their ordinances of seces- 
sion forthwith. The Republicans were asked to make no 
reference to any special case but only to declare themselves 
submissive to this legal principle which is the backbone of 
the American system of government. They flatly refused, 
to make this declaration. 2 A dictum of the Supreme Court 
had recently declared that slaves were property under the 
Constitution of the United States and should therefore be 
recognized as such in the national territories. Under the 
American system of government as developed by American 
jurists and statesmen, the decision of the Supreme Court is! 
final until an amendment to the Constitution or another deci- 
sion of the Court annuls the former decision. Thomas Jef- 
ferson, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln are three 
American presidents who, disagreeing with some particular 
decision of the Court, have opposed this system ; neverthe- 
less, the system remains intact in spite of the terrific attacks 
leveled at it by the three distinguished executives. How- 
ever, the reasoning with which the great chief justice, John 
Marshall, sustained it in the opinion delivered in the famous 
case of Marbury versus Madison, has never been answered. 

In the first inaugural, Lincoln stated that he had the most 
solemn oath registered in heaven to " preserve, protect and 

1 " Coercion/' commented the New York A'ews, " could not have been 
put in a more agreeable form ; it reads like a challenge under the code." 
2 Black's Black, p. 156. 



497] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER 83 

defend the national government " and that to the extent of 
his ability he would take care as the Constitution expressly- 
enjoined him tha't the laws of the Union be faithfully ex- 
ecuted in all the states. He further remarked that the 
power confided in him would be used to " hold, occupy and 
possess the property and places belonging to the govern- 
ment " and that he would perform this simple duty as far 
as practicable, unless his rightful master, the American 
people, withheld the requisite means or in some " authori-> 
tative " manner directed him otherwise. It should be noted 
with what consummate tact Lincoln avoids the unequivocal 
declaration that he will support the Constitution of the 
United States as interpreted by the Supreme Court and howf 
gracefully he refrains from obeying the manifest preference 
of the American people for conciliation because it hadf 
not been expressed in an " authoritative " manner. 

The most vital and important point of the program of 
the adminstration which was set forth in the first inaugural, 
and upon which the success or failure of the coercionists! 
depended, consisted in a few apparently simple remarks 
addressed evidently to the seceders although there were 
none present to profit by them. They were as follows : 
" In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and. 
not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Gov- 
ernment will not assail you. You can have no conflict with- 
out being yourselves the aggressors." Manifestly, there 
was one point on which Mr. Lincoln had become absolutely 
convinced and that was that it would be extremely unwise 
for the coercionist minority to undertake to coerce the se- 
ceding states unless it appeared that the undertaking was in 
self-defense. He felt, in company with other astute coer- 
cioriists, that they could not afford to fire the first shot in 
the opening of hostilities. The public opinion of America 
would not sanction the adoption of force per se until it] 



8 4 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^3 

was certain that conciliation had failed and it is extremely 
doubtful whether it would have adopted it then. For the " let 
the erring sisters go in peace " of the bona fide abolitionists 
had a backing outside of the abolitionist circle and the seces- 
sionists per se very strongly advocated this same policy. 
Lincoln's insistence upon the South's being the aggressor 
(he made this assertion both in his inaugural and in his pub- 
lic utterances on his way to Washington from Springfield for 
the inauguration) and the insistence upon this point by the 
members of Lincoln's cabinet and by the Republican coer- 
cionist press during this period, shows conclusively that 
Lincoln and the Republican coercionists accurately gauged 
the public opinion of the time. 1 The tremendous signifi- 

1 Speech at Philadelphia and Indianapolis on his way to Washington 
and Springfield Journal of March 4 and March 7, 1861 ; the New Haven 
I Conn.] Journal and Courier of April 11, after the expedition had been 
sent to Sumter, solemnly assured its readers that " In these movements 
the Administration is not provoking rebellion or war. It is simply sus- 
taining the Constitution and preserving the authority of the State. If 
any attack is made it will be an overt act of resistance to the United 
States, an act of treason, calling for all the power of the Government 
to put it down. There is Fort Sumter with a United States garrison. 
Its garrison needs provisions and it is the duty of the Government to 
furnish them. If interfered with, it must use force against force. Per- 
haps ere this, force has been applied, and maybe the telegraph this morn- 
ing will bring accounts of actual acts of treason. The people are true 
to the core and will fully sustain the Government in preserving its 
honor, and its very existence." The New York Evening Post of April 
9, 1861, contains the following cloudy treatment of the inauguration of 
the coercion policy in an editorial entitled "Bow-wow!": "How the 
Charlestonians will fight, after so many weeks of savage preparation 
and more savage boasting, remains to be discovered. But no one will 
deny them the credit of being most persistent and ingenious bullies. 
They have bullied everybody and every side for now some five months. 
. . . We have been bullied with pictures of the horrors of bloodshed — 
we have been bullied with descriptions of the pleasures of peace — our 
Charleston fellow-citizens (for they are yet citizens of the United 
States, in spite of themselves) have threatened to starve us; to draw all 
the coin of the North to the South; to send us not a bale of cotton — 
they have threatened to do everything but eat Major Anderson and his 



499] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER 85 

cance of " Who fired the first shot ? " to the common man, 
was brought out continually during the whole war, when 
northern prisoners upon being reproached for fighting to 
" make niggers the equal of white men," would repeatedly 
defend themselves by retorting, " Who fired the first shot? " 
In view of the fact that three-fifths of the American 
people voted against Lincoln, and that probably more than 
four-fifths of the American people preferred compromise to 
civil war or to a dissolution of the Union, it is important 
to note that Lincoln based his attack upon secession and 
his refusal to acknowledge it as one of the rights of a 
state upon the fact that the secessionists were not a major- 
ity but a minority of the American people. " If the min- 
ority," he said, " will not acquiesce, the majority must, 
or the government must cease. There is no other alterna- 
tive; for continuing the government is acquiescence on one 
side or the other. If a minority in such case secede rather 
than acquiesce they make a precedent which in turn wilt 

men, and 1 we have no doubt they would threaten that if they thought it 
would scare the brave major. Like veritable bullies, they have endeav- 
ored to achieve by loud talking what men very seldom achieve without 
hard blows. They have roared like lions, and they have a right to feel 
hurt that no one seems alarmed. 

" There is an old fable of a lion and a donkey going hunting in com- 
pany. Coming to a cave in which were some goats, the donkey volun- 
teered to enter and by his brays frighten out the goats, who would thus 
rush into the lion's mouth. The donkey, knowing the harmless nature 
of the goats, rushed in and alarmed them with most terrific roars. 
After which, emerging, half out of breath, he found his companions 
surrounded by carcasses. 'Did I not roar terribly?' said the vain don- 
key, anxious to elicit a compliment. ' You did,' gravely replied the lion ; 
' I should have been frightened myself if 1 had not known who it was.' 

" Among the telegraphic messages received here from Charleston yes- 
terday is one which has a most horrid and frightful roar : 

" ' Bloodshed is inevitable, and if one drop of blood is spilt, no one 
knows when it will end.' 

" We should be very much frightened at this — only we know who it 
is. It is only a South Carolina donkey." 



86 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 500 

divide and ruin them : for a minority of their own will se- 
cede from them whenever a majority refuses to be control- 
led by such a minority." 

This is a very accurate statement. A majority had voted 
against Lincoln and a majority of the nation wanted com- 
promise, while Lincoln, representing a minority, refused to 
accede to the wishes of the majority. It was perfectly true 
that the majority of the nation were opposed to secession or 
the breaking up of the nation, but they were in favor of 
preserving the national unity, not by war but by the time- 
honored method of conciliation. It is highly probable that 
a majority of American voters believed that Lincoln's above 
statement applied solely to the secessionist per se minority — ■ 
because a majority of American voters did not know then, 
and do not know now, that a man can be legally elected Presi- 
dent when a vast majority have voted against him. 1 

Lincoln also refrained in the inaugural from referring to 
the doctrines enunciated in the House^Divided speech and 
confined his anti-slavery doctrines to the single statement 
that the only substantial difference between the sections was 
that one section thought slavery was right and ought to be 
extended and that the other thought it was wrong and ought 
not to be extended. This reduction of the anti-slavery tenets 
of the Republican party to a false simplicity was thoroughly 
in keeping with the plan outlined in the letter to Trumbull 
which advised " keeping back out of view our distinctive 
party principles." The slavery question at that time was 
hardly a simple matter of right and wrong and certainly 
it is incorrect to infer that the inaugural treated it as such ; 
for the treatment of the negro question in the inaugural is 
distinctly political rather than moral. The question was 
then and is now fundamentally a racial question, although 
at that time its political importance was paramount. It 

1 Hence it is possible " to fool some of the people all of the time." 



qoi] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER Sy 

also had its social, economic and legal phases, all of which 
Mr. Lincoln subordinated to the exigency of maintaining 1 
the public confidence in his leadership. The maintenance 
of the public's confidence necessitates that a leader should 
never obviously back down from a position he has definitely 
upheld. 

Another prominent feature of the inaugural was the in- 
corporation of the Rev. R. J. Breckinridge's theory of 
national supremacy. It is interesting to note that this) 
famous theory of national supremacy derives one supreme 
nation from the thirteen (or thirty-three) sovereign states! 
of the Union by a logical process similar to that by which 
the Geneva Catechism establishes the Calvinistic doctrine 
of the Trinity. The Rev. Dr. Breckinridge was a learned 
Presbyterian theologian and wielded great influence not 
only in Kentucky x but also in Missouri where his nephew, 
Judge Samuel Miller Breckinridge, influenced the Mis- 
sourians to act on his advice. The address which con- 
tained the national supremacy theory had had a much wider 
circulation than the two above mentioned border states. 
It was delivered on Jan. 4, 1861, at Lexington, Ky. and im- 
mediately attracted attention all over the United States. 
It was published in the newspapers, went through several 
pamphlet editions and was even published in the London 
Times. 3 President Lincoln evidently found it highly 

1 Breckinridge papers, R. J. Breckinridge to W. C. P. Breckinridge, 
Jan., 1861, and Garret Davis to R. J. Breckinridge, Jan. 19, 1861. 

2 Ibid., see letters of S. M. Breckinridge to R. J. Breckinridge in the 
first months of 1861 down through April 8. 

3 Ibid. Letters came to the Rev. R. J. Breckinridge from all over the 
country. See especially letters dated Jan. 15, 16, Feb. 17, Feb. 22; W. 
M. Hill of Louisville, who apparently had) in charge the distribution of 
the pamphlet edition, writes that there were " many calls for speech of 
Jan. 4 from the North but very few from the South." However, see 
Breckinridge papers, passim, for the extent of circulation of the so- 
called " Fast Day Sermon." 



88 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 re 02 

useful; for, he used its arguments not only in the first 
inaugural but also in his first message to Congress. 1 

The major thesis of the first inaugural seemed to be that 
there was but one course which stern duty left open for the 
administration and that the dutiful President would un- 
flinchingly take that course. However, the President warily 
added that "the course here indicated will be followed un- 
less current events and experience shall show a modification 
or change to be proper and in every case and exigency my 
best discretion will be exercised according to circumstances 
actually existing, and with a view and hope of a peaceful 
solution of the national troubles and the restoration of 
fraternal sympathies and affections." 

After reading the inaugural, Elmer Wright of Boston 
wrote Salmon P. Chase that it was " the most masterly piece 
of generalship which human history has yet to show " 
within his knowledge. " I hardly know," he continued, 
"which most to admire, the adroit and effective use of the 
rotten plank in the Chicago platform or the sound judg- 
ment which puts the supreme court back in its proper place. 
The whole drift shows that the new president's heart is in 
the right place [with the radicals of the North], and that 
though far in advance of the average North — he knows 
how to make it follow him solid. My only hope for the 
country has long been the folly of the slaveholders. That 
does not seem likely to fail now. The wiser and kinder 
you are, the more foolish they will be, and the surer to fight 
and be destroyed." 2 

1 Ibid. Happersett to R. J. B., Sept. 13, 1861. "He [Lincoln] evi- 
dently wanted to see you and spoke in highest terms of you. I regret 
that you did not visit Washington. I alluded to your article on the state 
of the country as being entirely the most satisfactory and conclusive 
on that subject of all that had been written. He seemed familiar with 
it, as I supposed he was from his message to Congress. That whole 
argument about state sovereignty, etc., was yours. He is your warm 
friend. . . . The truth is we are looking to you for the support of Ky. 
to the General Government more than to any living man." 
'Chase papers, Wright to Chase, March 7, 1861. 



-03] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER 89 

The inaugural was indeed a masterpiece of its kind. Its 
emphasis on the perpetuity of the Union and its reduction 
of the obnoxious anti-slavery doctrine of the Chicago plat- 
form to a mere matter of opinion on the right and wrong 
of slavery with no program apparently attached for en- 
forcing the northern view, did not unnecessarily or pre- 
maturely alarm the Union-Savers of the border slave states. 
These states impatiently awaited, but awaited, to see if the 
current of events would not modify the coercionist course 
indicated in the inaugural. The North was well satisfied. 
There was nothing in it to agitate excessively the conserva- 
tives who approved of the idea of the " enforcement of the 
law," while at the same time, there was enough nourishment 
in the " enforcement of the law " for the war group. The 
seceded South saw nothing but war in it. for it very 
emphatically repudiated a peaceful dissolution of the 
Union and offered no apology for the sectionalization of 
the national government. It contained nothing which 
limited the years of control by the northern sectional league. 
The inaugural reveals the trtfth that Lincoln was no 
" Simple Susan," but as shrewd a Yankee as America has 
ever produced. 1 Many of the border states people seem 
to have felt, that the revealed policy of Lincoln later proved 
him to be a guilty dissembler in the inaugural. However, 
he was skillfully accurate but it was impossible for the 
common man, with his mind untrained in the critical analy- 
sis practiced by lawyers and politicians to grasp the full 
significance of his statement. Elmer Wrights were rela- 
tively very few. 

Nothing more clearly brings out the essential difference 
'between the statesmanship of Clay and Lincoln than a com- 
parison of their tactics on like occasions, when the main 
point of dispute between the North and the South was over 

1 See Lamon's Lincoln for substantiation of this, p. 481. 



9o THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [- ^ 

the legal status of the negro though this was. on both oc- 
casions, a matter of no practical importance in itself. Clay- 
was able on the occasion of the admission of Missouri to 
the Union to persuade the "conscientious" northerner to 
forego his conscientious litigiousness for the sake of peace. 
" What is your plan." Clay asked the northerners, " in 
regard to Missouri ? " Do you intend to coerce her to alter 
her Constitution? How will you do all this? Is it your 
design to employ the bayonet? We tell you frankly our 
views. They are to admit her absolutely if we can, and, if 
not, with the condition which we have offered. You are 
bound to disclose your views with equal frankness. You 
aspire to be thought statesmen. As sagacious and enlight- 
ened statesmen, you should look to the fearful future, and 
let the country understand what is your remedy for the 
evils which lie before us." 1 The northern leaders of that 
day had no plan for the fearful future and acceded to the 
compromise. But the northern anti-slavery leaders of i860 
had two plans, one of which was to let the " erring sisters " 
go in peace. The other plan, which was advocated by the 
coercionists, was accurately, but not frankly and explicitly 
laid before the American people in the inaugural address 5 
of Lincoln. However, it was completely outlined in the 
Trumbull letter from Springfield, which advocated merg- 
ing all sectional questions into and making them subservient 
to forceful preservation of the Union and " when the smoke 
of battle shall have passed away, the Union will be saved, 
the victory won, and our principles secure." Whether Lin- 
coln originated this plan is immaterial. The main point is 
he carried it out. 

Before the Republican accession to office, the Republican 
leaders were very anxious for President Buchanan to take 
summary proceedings against South Carolina after the 

1 Prentice's Clay, pp. 208-209. 



505] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER Qr 

fashion of Andrew Jackson. But James Buchanan was 
not molded on the lines of Andrew Jackson, for Buchanan 
was not cursed or blessed with the ability to see only one 
side of a question. (As a northerner, he understood the 
northern point of view but he tried so hard to be fair to 
the extreme southerners during his entire administration 
that the northerners came to feel that he resembled the man 
who thanked the beggar to whom he had just given alms). 
The Republicans felt that if the Democratic president took 
prompt action to crush secession in South Carolina, none 
of the other southern states would have dared secede, 
no matter how pat the Republicans stood on the Chicago 
platform nor how tightly they held to the propriety of the 
sectional control of the national government. But Buch- 
anan was unable to conclude that the situation of i860 wast 
sufficiently like that of 1832 to justify the same treatment. 
He felt that there were more differences than likenesses be- 
tween 1832 and i860. It was obvious that South Carolina 
was the storm center on both occasions but the likeness stop- 
ped about there. The situation of i860 was more serious 
than that of 1832 for two reasons. First: The numbers of 
persons feeling dissatisfaction were vastly greater in i860 
than in 1832 and the whole South and not one state was in- 
volved. Second : The intensity of the feeling of dissatisfac- 
tion of i860 was vastly deeper than in 1832. It so happens 
that the difference between a mob revolt and a respectable 
revolution is only a matter of numbers and intensity. 
Therefore. Buchanan concluded that i860 should not be 
handled like 1832. He favored the adoption of the Crit- 
tenden Compromise and used, as a result of his principles, 
the utmost care to prevent a clash between the federal and 
state authorities — without, at the same time, recognizing the 
right of secession. He thus kept the road clear for a peace- 
ful solution of the controversy by the incoming administra- 



C, 2 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 5 q5 

tion, the personnel of which he thought responsible for the 
crisis because of the attempted sectional control of the 
government. Lincoln had sowed the wind in the House- 
Divided speech and Buchanan was willing to do nothing 
which would keep the Republican President from reaping 
his own whirlwind. 1 Before condemning Buchanan for 
not adopting the policy in regard to South Carolina so highly 
recommended by the Republican leaders, it should be re- 
called that Buchanan accurately represented the will of the 
majority of the American people which was in favor of a 
peaceful preservation of the Union. And if obedience to 
the will of the majority of the people can be taken as a 
criterion of merit under a government of, by and for the 
people, then Buchanan deserves praise for his careful per- 
formance of duty during the last four months of his ad- 
ministration. Buchanan so acted that he neither made 
civil war inevitable, nor a successful dissolution of the 
Union possible. 1 He neither followed the advice of the 
Republican leaders who wished him to heavily garrison all 
of the southern forts, including Fort Sumter, nor the advice 
of the secessionists per se who desired him to evacuate the 
forts and recognize the dissolution of the Union. 2 He 
acted under the advice of Jeremiah S. Black, one of the 
ablest jurists America has yet produced. 

It is a tremendously serious responsibility to take the 
decisive step which turns loose the dogs of war, and es- 
pecially the dogs of civil war. After being inaugurated, 
the Republicans apparently hesitated to send reenforce- 
ments to the federal garrisons located in the southern states. 

1 See letter of Joseph Holt to James O. Harrison, Jan. 14, 1861, in 
James O. Harrison papers, and letter of J. S. Black to James Buchanan, 
Oct. 5. 1861, in Black papers for an understanding of this position. 
Also see Black's instructions to foreign ministers in Black papers. 

2 Trescot's account, edited by Gaillard Hunt. 



507] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER g^ 

The garrison at Fort Sumter lying in Charleston Harbor, 
South Carolina, was the cynosure of all eyes. The fact 
that it was in the home state of the secessionists per se 
created a very critical situation, for the secessionists had 
demanded its surrender to the state authorities. The seces- 
sionists per sc had been prevailed upon in the 1 interests of a 
peaceable secession to await decisive action on the part of 
the incoming administration before reducing the fort. 
President Lincoln sent a special messenger to South Caro- 
lina to report to him the exact state of feeling in this locality, 
and he seems to have faithfully reported the condition ex- 
isting. 1 Given the acute state of feeling in South Carolina, 
it was thoroughly understood that an attempt by the Re- 
publicans to reenforce either with arms or provisions the 
garrison at Fort Sumter would result in the South Caro- 
linians opening fire on the American flag — <the flag which had 
ceased to represent for them a government based on the con- 
sent of the governed. The South Carolinians judged that an 
attempt on the part of the Republican administration to re- 
enforce the federal forts in the southern seceded states 
would be undeniable evidence that the Republicans had de- 
cided on coercion unless such action was preceded by a 
compromise agreement. The South Carolinians felt that 
an attempt to coerce the seceded states would bring the 
entire South to their side 2 and that the policy of coercion of 
the Republicans would not be sustained by a united North ; 
for before the reenforcement of Sumter there were three 
well defined groups in the North, namely, the coercionists, 
the conciliating Unionists, and the peaceful dissolutionists. 
The people of the northern tier of slave states were 
unanimously in favor of a peaceful perpetuation of the 
Union provided the Lincoln administration gave evidence 

1 Lamon's Lincoln, p. 79. 

'Crawford papers, F. W. Pickens to Toombs, Feb. 12, 1861. 



94 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 rrQg 

of conciliation. They were unanimously in favor of peace- 
ful adjustment and unanimously opposed to coercion. The 
inaugural had not closed the door completely on conciliation, 
and the border people anxiously awaited decisive action on 
the part of the administration. They implored the evacua- 
tion of Fort Sumter by the Federal Government on the 
ground of giving the Soiith Carolinians a good opportunity 
to cool down before the difficulty was pushed to a bloody 
extreme. 1 If there was ever a people who more earnestly 
desired peace than the inhabitants of the border states their 
prayers are not recorded. The border state leaders seemed 
to have fully realized that the disunionists per se were in- 
creasing in numbers and that the war party at the North 
was also gaining recruits as the news of the radical disun- 
ionist per se utterances were circulated broadcast at the 
North by the northern radical papers. The border states 
people felt that if a collision between the two sets of radicals 
could be indefinitely delayed, both groups would perish 
from peace. They knew that the conciliatory unionists 
were in a majority. William H. Seward, Lincoln's Secre- 
tary of State, gave heed to their prayers in regard to the 
evacuation of Fort Sumter and even for a time thought 
that he had convinced or could convince Lincoln that this 
was a desirable course. 2 He led the southern commissioners 

1 Letter of John M. Harlan, typical view of border statesmen. Holt 
papers, Harlan to Holt, March n, 1861. Also see in Breckinridge 
papers, letter of James O. Harrison to W. C. P. Breckinridge, March 
30, 1 861. 

'There has been some dispute in regard to whether Seward acted 
with Lincoln's knowledge in his communication with the southern com- 
missioners. Lincoln was too shrewd to commit himself definitely but 
it is highly probable that Lincoln consented to the circulation of the 
report that Sumter was to be evacuated for the purpose of conciliating 
the peace faction in the Republican party which Seward represented. 
See the account of Seward's policy given in the Spring-field Journal, 
March 15, 1861. The Republican press announced that if the Repub- 



5 C9] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER 95 

who were negotiating the recognition of the southern Con- 
federacy at Washington to believe that Sumter would be 
evacuated and they were asked to wait until after the policy 
of evacuation could be tried out in the North. 1 

The report that Sumter was to be evacuated was accord- 
ingly circulated throughout the North." This experiment 
was to test out whether a " peace policy " on the part of the 
administration would hold the alienated conservative element 
in the ranks of the Republican party. Local and congres- 
sional elections were to take place in Connecticut, Rhode 
Island. Ohio, and a few other places, during the last of 
March and the first of April. The candidates opposing the 
Republican nominees in these elections ran on the fusion 
ticket now completely fused and known as " Unionists " or 
"Union Democrats," the name of "Union-Saver" being 
now no longer a matter of open derision. It was apparent 
that the mass of the people began to feel that, after all, the 
" old gentlemen " who launched the Union party the year 
before did understand the signs of the times. The " Union- 
ist " press of the North assisted by the Democrats, chorused 
" We told you what the election of a sectional president 
would result in." 

licans won the spring elections it would mean peace. Doubtless this 
was perfectly true, but many conservative Republicans did not see the 
point and obdurately voted for the Union-Democrats, who also prom- 
ised peace. 

J The Confederate commissioners were commended by the Secretary 
of State of the Confederate States for their condxict in suspending a 
demand for a reply in order to enable the Government of the United 
States to ascertain the effect of the evacuation of Fort Sumter. Date 
of commendatory letter, March 28, 1861, Crawford papers. 

2 The New York Tribune report of the evacuation closed with the 
following : " Let all remember that the strength has not yet departed 
from our flag and that this movement (evacuation of Sumter) may be 
only the crouch to precede the decisive leap." Greeley was on the " in- 
side" at this period and knew perfectly well what the situation was in 
the cabinet, and in the White House. 



q6 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [- I0 

The spring elections unmistakably showed the trend of 
public opinion. A reaction against the Republicans had set 
in and the result was pretty much of a landslide for the 
Union-Democrats. Cincinnati went fusionist by a good 
majority; Sandusky, Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus and other 
cities lined up behind the " dough-face " opposition as the 
radical wing of the Republican party was pleased to call 
those who did not see through radical spectacles. Even 
Republican New England broke ranks in spots. It looked 
as though the Republican party were breathing its last and 
were being consigned to oblivion for bringing on a dissolu- 
tion of the Union. Nobody was quite so unpopular at this 
period as an abolitionist. 

It was clear to Sew T ard on April i , when the returns from 
the elections held the last of March had come in. that 
the country was clamoring for peace and the only possible 
way to preserve peace was to evacuate Fort Sumter. He 
doubtless felt that the mere report that Sumter was to be 
evacuated was not sufficient to win anew the alienated con- 
servative vote which the Administration's not-an-inch policy 
in regard to compromise had turned away from allegiance 
to Republicanism. So, he wrote Lincoln a note, bearing 
the date April I, (and some have thought it very appro- 
priately dated), which has become quite famous. In this 
note he offered to take the responsibility — manifestly, for 
the evacuation of Fort Sumter. It seems that Seward, the 
author of the "irrepressible conflict" phrase, really had no 
desire for the conflict to become a reality especially while his 
constituents were clamoring for peace. In the face of a 
landslide for the Union-Democrats, it seems possible that 
Seward might have been nervous over his political future 
on April i, 1861. But Lincoln calmly replied that he was 
willing to take the responsibility — manifestly.' for Civile 
War, although one might infer that he was willing to share 



5i i ] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER gy 

this responsibility, because he was careful to ask his cabinet 
to hand him their opinions in regard to Fort Sumter in 
writing, on March 15, and again on March 29, Judging 
from these written replies to the President's requests, the 
question which troubled the cabinet was not so much 
whether Fort Sumter should or should not be evacuated, 
but was whether the country — the common man — would or 
would not come to the conclusion that the Republican 
leaders were responsible for the Civil War which it was 
felt that the reenforcement of Sumter would precipitate. 1 

Francis P. Blair, Sr, and other members of the coercionist 
group protested vigorously when they heard it rumored that 
Sumter was to be evacuated. In fact many members of the 
war group were disgusted at Mr. Lincoln's way of " putting 
his foot down." 2 The Secretary of the Treasury, who was 
a member of this group on the " inside," doubtless consider- 
ably relieved the minds of some of his radical supporters 
when he wrote them as follows : 3l 

Gentlemen : It is so natural for Republicans to be in opposition 
to the administration at Washington that they do not as yet realize 
the necessity of defending its measures as a matter of duty, relying 
on the President and his Cabinet to be true to their principles 
when their policy by force of circumstances is concealed from the 
public view or must of necessity for a time Temain undisclosed. 
I greatly regret the result of the election in our State from causes 
so utterly beyond all control. 

The " necessity " or " force of circumstances " which for a 
time caused the policy of the Lincoln administration to re- 
main undisclosed or concealed from public view was of two 

1 Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. vi. 

s Van Buren papers, Blair to Van Buren, May I, 1861. Trumbull 
papers, Plato to Trumbull, March 29, 1861. Chase papers, Antrams to 
Chase, 1861. 

•Chase papers, Chase to Antrams, April 9, 1861. 



gS THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [512 

varieties. The announcement that Sumter was to be evacu- 
ated and the delay in sending support to Sumter until after 
the effect of a " peace policy " on the Republican party for- 
tunes could be demonstrated for Seward's benefit, was doubt- 
less a compromise arrangement by which neither wing of 
the Republican party was alienated. An announcement 
on March 4 that the administration definitely intended to re- 
enforce Sumter would have alienated the conservatives. 
That Seward did not resign from the cabinet when the 
" stirring up of Sumter " was finally decided upon indicates 
the efficacy of the delay. And furthermore, if " bread " 
was not sent to Sumter until the garrison was actually in 
need the common man would be much more likely to feel that 
the Federal Government was not " coercing " the seceded 
states. Manifestly, the Administration was awaiting the 
" psychological moment " and it had arrived when on April 
8, one of the Confederate commissioners at Washington re- 
ceived the following telegram from Charleston signed by 
General Beauregard : " Special messenger from Lincoln 
Mr. Chew informs us Sumter to be provisioned peaceably,, 
otherwise forcibly." 

As the ships bearing supplies sent by the Lincoln ad- 
ministration appeared on the horizon outside of the Char- 
leston harbor, the South Carolinians opened fire from the 
batteries on the shore of the harbor. There was no possible 
chance of holding the fort by the Federal authorities, but 
as Horace White has so well said, " Nothing could have 
been contrived so sure to awaken the volcanic forces that 
ended in the destruction of slavery as the spectacle in 
Charleston Harbor." x Blair hoped that the spirit of pat- 
riotism would be aroused in the northern people by the 
fort's being lost by battle rather than by tame evacuation. 2 

1 Lyman Trumbull, by Horace White, p. 164. 

1 Van Buren papers, Van Buren from Blair, May I, 1861. 



513] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER qq 

The lowering of the American flag which accompanied the 
surrender of the fort to the South Carolinians unified the 
North, the people of which locality proceeded to stand to- 
gether regardless of party political differences on the " plat- 
form of the flag." And Lincoln contentedly wrote to the 
commander of the Sumter expedition that even though 
the fort was lost the purpose of the expedition was accom- 
plished. 1 The South Carolinians had not profited suffi- 
ciently by the advice in the inaugural, i.e., " You can have 
no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors." Upon 
the fall of Sumter, Lincoln issued forthwith a call for 
75,000 troops to defend the government and put down the 
traitorous insurrection. Thus was the policy of coercion 
formally declared. The delay in revealing it had been one 
of purposeful indecision, for the result was a united North. 
But there is no evidence to indicate that the thousands of 
northern men who sanctioned the call to arms issued by the 
President had any desire to abolish slavery by the sword or 
that they had any intention to deny the southerners one 
iota of their rights under a government based on the " com- 
mon " consent of the governed. They merely felt an over- 

1 Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. vi, pp. 
261-262; A. Lincoln to Gustavus V. Fox, May 1, 1861, "You and I 
both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by 
making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; 
and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justi- 
fied by the result." It was very easy for the Republicans to get the 
preservation of the Republican party mixed up with the preservation of 
the Union. They considered the two, one and inseparable. See Tyler 
papers, John Tyler to Benj. Patton, May 7, 1861, for Tyler's view of 
Lincoln's action, " Who can fail to acknowledge that the demonstration 
on Ft. Sumter was a mere pretext for what followed. The stake played 
for is neither to repair his own wounded honor or to avenge the flag 
which he purposely designed to be struck from the flagstaff of Ft. Sum- 
ter, but to rally the masses of the North around his own person and to 
prevent the faction which had brought him into power from falling 
asunder. In this he has succeeded." 



lOO THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 r-j. 

whelming desire to defend the flag, the sacred symbol of 
free government, from desecration. The popularity of 

" Shoot if you must this old grey head, 
But spare your country's flag, she said." 

is very significant. It is not an accident that the "Star 
Spangled Banner " is the national anthem of America. The 
flag is far more reverenced in the " land of the free and the 
home of the brave " than the President, for the flag can do 
no wrong. The Americans are said to have a " bunting 
patriotism " because it is so easily aroused by a combination 
of " red white and blue " bunting. This feeling is espec- 
ially noticeable in Americans in foreign lands when they 
see the stars and stripes floating in the breeze. 1 

The enormous difference made by the manner in which 
coercion was put into effect is a matter of great psychological 
interest. The change in public sentiment in the northerners 
produced by the incidents connected with the firing on the 
flag in Charleston Harbor seemed almost miraculous to 
some of the Republicans. Instead of a minority, the coer- 
cionists suddenly became a majority as if by magic. 2 The 

1 The following quotation from a letter in the Manuscripts Division 
of the Library of Congress, from a man in Philadelphia to "Charlie" 
[dated April 15, 1861] illustrates the flag sentiment in the North: 
" Great guns, never saw such excitement, people crazy, large crowds of 
boys and young men of the lowest class running through the city 
making rum mills and taverns throw out the stars and stripes to the 
breeze to satisfy their union sentiments, consequently the town is filled 
with the National Bunting. ... I expect from the universal excitement 
that 75,000,000 to 100,000,000 men will call to see the C. S. A. shortly. 
Everybody is for going down to conquer the rebels." 

* The evidence that a great change was produced by the firing on the 
flag at Sumter upon the public opinion at the North is overwhelming. 
See Greeley's American Conflict, vol. i, p. 458; Chase papers, Nash to 
Chase, May 3, 1861, " I would not have believed that such a change in 
public opinion could have occurred in so short a time." Mitchell to 
Chase, April 18, 1861, "The change in public sentiment is wonderful — 



ci 5] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER IO i 

law of the mental unity of crowds went into effect with the 
firing on the flag at Sumter and the call to arms. The men- 
tal phenomenon produced by these events is one of common 
occurrence on a small scale but seldom has it been demon- 
strated in such vast proportions. 

The psychological explanation of what happened is as 
follows: In addition to the excitemtnt of the instinct of 
counter-attack, 1 which is one of man's most powerful in- 
stincts, the northern people found themselves reaching the 
conclusion that the whole South was responsible for the 
firing on Sumter, instead of the relatively small group of 
secessionists per se. The excitement of the public mind 
caused by a presidential election had been continued by the 
secession of the southern peoples and was raised to a high 
state of expectancy by the announcement in the newspapers 

almost miraculous — a few weeks since the leading commercial paper 
here, and a very influential one in mercantile circles, the Journal of 
Commerce, to prevent the spreading of Republican sentiments, an- 
nounced that the prominent advocate thereof would be the first to be 
visited by public condemnation should hostilities commence. Instead, 
vice versa." Ball to Chase, April 16, 1861, "There's nothing but force 
to bring the rebels to reason. Mr. Lincoln's proclamation has reached 
the heart of our whole people and they are now organizing for the 
conflict." Archibald to Chase, April 24, 1861, " You have no doubt 
noticed the astonishing outbreak of patriotic enthusiasm in the news- 
papers since the firm stand by the Administration in the controversy 
with the Algerine Confederacy. . . . The loyal enthusiasm of the People 
cannot be overstated or exaggerated. . . . Lincoln stock arose one thou- 
sand per cent at least and if the spring elections were to come off now 
the result would be very different. Courage and intrepidity win all." 
Hammond papers, R. Buchanan to Hammond, April 17, 1861, " The 
Fort Sumter affair united the entire North and West to sustain the 
honor of our flag and uniform and the integrity of the Union at all 
hazards." Washburne papers, April 15, 1861, Wheeler to Washburne, 
" The change in sentiment here in the last ten days is most wonderful — 
all say the Government must be sustained." 

1 See Thorndike's Educational Psychology, p. 24, for a description of 
this instinct. 



4-02 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^5 

that Fort Sumter was to be provisioned. This abnormal 
condition of the public brain was that which the psychologist 
terms a " suggestible state of mind." Psychologically 
speaking, a "suggestion" is a process of communication 
resulting in the acceptance with conviction of the communi- 
cated proposition in the absence of logically adequate 
grounds for its acceptance. The impressive character of 
the source from which the suggestion is communicated en- 
hances the amount of illogicalness which the " suggestible" 
brain will pass by without question in accepting the sug- 
gested proposition with the utmost conviction. A deficiency 
•of knowledge relating to the topic in regard to which the 
^suggestion is made also increases the chances for the sug- 
gestion to take effect. 1 

A deficiency of knowledge existed in the North in re- 
gard to the cause of secession, especially among that portion 
of the electorate whose reading was confined to the Re- 
publican partisan press, and the response to the call to arms 
had to be made with such rapidity that there was no time 
to investigate adequately who ordered the firing on the flag, 
and to discover that the situation after the firing was the 
same in so far as the mass of southern people were con- 
cerned as before the firing. The suggestion which came 
from the President of the United States was that " a law- 
less combination " of persons was attacking the Federal 
Government and the nation, and that this combination must 
he suppressed if government based on the consent of the 
governed was to be perpetuated in the United States. The 
northern people accepted this suggestion with conviction 
and rushed to arms. Argument was silenced and reason 
•dethroned and the non-rational inference held sway through- 
out the nation. 

1 See McDougall's Social Psychology for an account of the " sugges- 
'/ion," pp. 96-102. 



317] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRING AT SUMTER 10 ^ 

In the southern states, the calling out of 75,000 troops 
by Lincoln had the same effect on the southern people as 
the firing on the flag had produced in the North. The law 
of the mental unity of crowds went into effect 1 and great 
numbers of southern people who had voted for Douglas and 
Bell and who conceded that South Carolina had no business 
to fire on the flag, rushed to arms to prevent the establish- 
ment of a government based on force in the southern states. 
It was felt that the call for troops by the Black Republican 
President was the final proof of the hostile intentions to- 
ward the South first enunciated in the House-Divided 
speech. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Caro- 
lina swiftly dashed out of the Union and the other border 
slave states almost dashed away also. " Maryland, My 
Maryland "" was roughly bridled — which is to say that 
President Lincoln had a number of the leading Marylanders 
jailed without benefit of the writ of habeas corpus to pre- 
vent them from taking Maryland formally out of the Union. 
The South was convinced that the " despot's heel " was on 
her shores and that the common defense needed provid- 
ing for against the Republican regime. 

Considering the convictions of both northerners and 
southerners, the battle cry of " Freedom " was equally ap- 
propriate for both northern and southern armies. But the 
freedom envisaged by both northerner and southerner was 
the freedom of the white man and not the freedom of the 

1 Le Bon's The Crowd, bk. 1, ch. 1. 

2 " Dear mother, burst the tyrant's chain, 

'Maryland ! 
Virginia should not call in vain, 

'Maryland ! 
She meets her sisters on the plain : 
' Sic semper ' 'tis the proud refrain, 
That baffles minions back amain — 

Maryland, my Maryland." 



IQ 4 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 j^g 

African slaves. Both the North and the South were willing 
to suffer to the uttermost to perpetuate and preserve " gov- 
ernment based on consent." The northerner looked upon 
secession and the firing on the flag as attempts on the part 
of the southerners to destroy that kind of government; while 
the southerners looked upon a northern sectional president 
summoning to arms 75,000 troops as an attempt to sutn 
jugate the South and annihilate the fundamental basis of a 
government of, by and for the people in the southern states. 
Certainly there is no evidence that the war which followed 
was an " irrepressible conflict " between free and slave 
labor. It was, however, a definite failure of democratic 
government to meet an emergency created primarily by 
the election of a sectional president according to the letter 
of the Constitution. Such an election defeated one of the 
primary purposes of the Constitution which was " to in- 
sure domestic tranquility." 1 Civil War is in itself the re- 
verse of " domestic tranquility." It seems highly probable 
that the Constitution would have been equal to this crisis, 
had not the presidential election machinery been subverted 
by political parties, or had Washington's advice regarding 
the formation of geographical political parties been incor- 
porated in the Constitution in the form of an amendment 
requiring the president to have in addition to the other re- 
quirements, at least 3 per cent of the popular vote in every 
state of the Union. However, Lincoln felt that 10 per cent 
of the voting population in i860 would be necessary to re- 
establish the Federal authority in a seceded state. 2 But 3 
per cent of the voters would insure that the national policy 
had something in common with every state. 

'The preamble of the Constitution of the United States gives the 
purposes for which it was established. 
'Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation, Dec. 8, 1863. 



CHAPTER VI 
Kentucky's Decision 

The great problem common to all of the border slave 
states upon the inauguration of Civil War was merely 
a matter of the side they were to sitand by and fighti 
on in the battles destined to be fought on their own soil. 
It was no easy problem to solve. Needless to say civil 
war which might bring servile insurrection into their midst 
was not of their choosing. In order to bring the border- 
state conditions in general into the spotlight, it has seemed 
desirable to concentrate attention on Kentucky, one of the 
northern tier of border states and the most centrally located 
of them. For, Kentucky was not only a typical border 
slave state but also became a pivotal state — so great was 
the importance of her decision. 

The Kentuckians of today have a reputation for being 
too ready with the use of fire-arms, but the Kentuckians of 
1861 were the most peaceable of all Americans. Civil 
war meant for them the direst of calamities, calamities 
from which they have not recovered after the lapse of over 
half a century. 1 Kentucky's 700 miles of defenseless and 

1 The greatest calamity was the debasement of political morality 
which was brought about by the injection of a mass of totally ignorant 
negroes into the electorate. These voters are gradually becoming more 
intelligent, but the mass of them still vote solidly the Republican ticket 
without the slightest knowledge of the questions involved in the election. 
They do so in childlike gratitude to Abraham Lincoln, who, they are 
constantly reminded, was their great benefactor. One wonders how 
they would vote if they knew that Lincoln wanted them all shipped 1 out 
of the country back to Africa after he had gotten them freed. 

519] I0 5 



io 6 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [e 2(> 

indefensible frontier along the Ohio River offered no in- 
ducement to her inhabitants to go to war with the inhabi- 
tants of the three populous states of Ohio, Indiana and 
Illinois, just across the river. On this line where the free 
and slave states met there was no " irrepressible conflict " 
visible; in fact the inhabitants of the states on either side 
of the Ohio River were on the friendliest of terms. So 
friendly were they that at the time Sumter fell, Kentucky 
had hardly enough gunpowder within her borders to fire a 
Fourth of July salute. Kentucky had been called the dark 
and bloody ground in the Indian days, but she had no 
desire to have her soil experience a second immersion as the 
battle ground of the sections. It should hardly be a matter 
of surprise that every Kentuckian, including John C. Breck- 
inridge, was absolutely opposed to civil war as the means of 
settling the difference of opinion between the North and the 
South in regard to what constituted a sectional control of the 
national government. Kentucky felt that if the leaders of 
both extremes had consulted either the interests or the coun- 
sels of Kentucky, there could have been no disunion and no 
coercion. Certainly. Abraham Lincoln, though born a Ken- 
tuckian, did not possess Kentucky eyes. 

Kentucky wanted above all else to preserve the Union 
and the peace between the North and the South. If there 
were good and sufficient reasons why Kentucky opposed 
civil war, there were also a number of excellent reasons 
why Kentucky opposed the dissolution of the Union. Dis- 
union was for Kentucky the greatests of evils and a 
remedy for none. Any scheme by which she was to sur- 
render an enviable position in the very heart of a great 
and prosperous nation had to have some compensating 
benefits. All that Kentucky felt she would gain by joining 
a southern confederacy was that she would get rid of asso- 
ciating under the same government with people " who did 



r 2 i] KENTUCKY'S DECISION ioy 

not admire negro slavery and had the ill manners or the im- 
pudence to say so." * She was far enough north to realize 
that the North had not been abolitionized and that Lincoln 
would be powerless to interfere wi'th slavery (except in case 
of civil war) even if he wished to do so, because the senti- 
ment of the North was then overwhelmingly conservative. 

The slaveholding interests in Kentucky had nothing to gain 
by a disunion on the line of the Ohio River. If Kentucky 
united herself with the South there was only the shadow of 
security for the institution of slavery in her territory even 
should there be no civil war. For disunion on the slave 
line meant bringing Canada down to the Ohio River. It 
was hardly to be expected that the free states would re- 
turn any fugitive slaves in the event of Kentucky's seces- 
sion and as Prentice said, breaking up the Union to preserve 
slaver}- in Kentucky was like breaking down stable doors 
to keep horses from running away. On the other hand, 
disunion on any line south of Kentucky would cut her off 
from the free navigation of the Mississippi River. If the 
mouth of that river were in the hands of a foreign govern- 
ment, the economic interests of Kentucky would be sure to 
suffer irreparably. 

The Kentuckians of that day were accused of lacking in 
sectional sympathy with the slaveholding South. However, 
it should be recalled that the Kentuckians of that generation 
had been trained in the school of the great nationalist, 
Henry Clay, and as one of them said, they felt that they 
owed no fealty to any section, " which was not in strict 
subordination to the higher, nobler, worthier fealty which 

1 Some of the northerners of i860 may have considered slavery a 
•question of morals, but it was not so regarded in the South. To a 
southerner, the northern abuse of the slave system was a breach of good 
manners tinged with hypocrisy. The southerners considered Charles 
Sumner's manners as barbarous as Charles Sumner considered the slave 
system. 



108 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860.1861 rr 22 

they owed to their country — that is to the whole nation. 
But if there was any section above all others, of which they 
were bound in close sympathy by the ties of friendship and 
permanent interest, it was their own section — that of which 
they were the heart and center, the great valley of the Mis- 
sissippi. 1 The manifest destiny of the states of the Missi- 
ssippi Valley was that they should remain one and insepar- 
able (and the Mississippi was understood to include its tri- 
butaries). This great river system was " a bond of union 
made by nature herself " and the Kentuckians thought that 
union should be maintained forever. 

It should carefully be borne in mind by all of those who 
wish to understand the position of Kentucky at this time 
that her people regarded both the action of the South Caro- 
lians and that of the Black Republicans as precipitate. If 
the South Carolinians were the " red precipitates," the stiff- 
necked Lincoln was a "black precipitate." However, the 
stirring strains of the southern call " Aux armes, citoyens, 
formez vos bataillons," was heard with more sympathy in 
Kentucky than was Lincoln's call for troops. 2 The Ken- 
tucky governor's reply to the Lincoln requisition was to the 
effect that Kentucky would furnish no troops for the wicked 
purpose of subjugating her sister states. Nevertheless a 
majority of the Kentuckians were more or less enraged at 

1 S. S. Nicholas's Essays, Conservative and Legal, pp. 138, 139. 

'The resolutions adopted at a Unionist meeting endorsed the Gov- 
ernor's response to Lincoln's requisition for troops. See the Louisville 
Journal, April 17, 1861, and also April 16, 1861, as follows: "We un- 
derstand an impression prevails in some quarters that the President's 
most extraordinary and unjustifiable Proclamation is illegal. This im- 
pression is not correct. The Proclamation is strictly within the letter 
of the law. The legality of the Proclamation is its only redeeming 
feature, and this feature doesn't redeem it. Far otherwise." Of course, 
if the Unionist Journal endorsed the refusal to send troops, the southern 
press and party also endorsed it. 



5 2 3 ] KENTUCKY'S DECISION 109 

South Carolina's action. To say the least they regarded 
is as a great tactical blunder. 

The border states were not secessionist per se and, there- 
fore had very little sympathy with South Carolina. 
It doubtless seemed to them that South Carolina never 
lost an opportunity to raise the flag of disunion or the 
red banner of revolution. Just after the John Brown raid 
into Virginia in the fall of 1859, South Carolina had sent 
Memminger as an ambassador to the other slaveholding 
states to unify them against the aggressions of the Black 
Republicans. The border states men seem to have felt that 
it was a case of " incipient secession " on the part of South 
Carolina. Brown's raid into Virginia had deeply excited 
the South, where it was widely felt that the author of the 
House Divided speech and the Irrepressible Conflict oration 
had plowed the ground for such outrages, and of course, 
such outrages plowed the ground for secession. But, as soon 
as A. H. H. Stuart of Virginia perceived the significance 
of South Carolina's messenger, he wrote Crittenden of Ken- 
tucky : " For God's sake, give us a rallying point. Mem- 
minger is here." 1 As a result, the old Whigs of the border 
slave states launched the Constitutional Unionist Party. 
They were the " Union Savers " par excellence. At the 
first signs of danger to the perpetuity of the Union, the 
border states and especially Kentucky, came forward and 
stood to the last between the extremes of the North and the 
South like " the prophet of old between the living and the 
dead to stay the pestilence." In this region, it was under- 
stood that the secession threats were made in ernest. 

During this time Kentucky was afflicted with too many 
leaders and was distracted with divided counsels in regard to 

1 Crittenden papers, Stuart to Crittenden, Jan. 22, i860. See Louis- 
ville Courier, Jan. 31, i860, for Memminger's speech before the Virginia 
Legislature. 



I IO THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [524 

the best policy to gain her ends. Henry Clay was dead and it 
seemed that " Ulysses had gone upon his wanderings and 
there was none left in all Ithaca who could bend his bow." 
Perhaps the Kentuckian of that day who was best equipped 
to inherit the mantle of Henry Clay was John C. Breckin- 
ridge, Vice-President of the United States under Buchanan, 
Senator-elect from Kentucky to succeed the venerable Crit- 
tenden at the expiration of his term, and candidate of the 
southern Democrats for the presidency in i860. Breckin- 
ridge is said to have possessed like Clay " a charming per- 
sonality " and was gifted with brilliancy. In 1861, Breckin- 
ridge advocated the secession of Kentucky and of all the 
slave states in order to reconstruct the Union and annihilate 
the northern sectional dictation of national policy. From 
within the ranks of the Democratic party in Kentucky, 
Breckinridge's policy was opposed by James Guthrie of 
Louisville. Nobody in Louisville seems to have liked any 
policy which they thought took chances on both the Union 
and civil war. 1 George D. Prentice, the great Whig editor 
of the Louisville Journal, opposed this policy. John J. 
Crittenden was also in opposition to it. None of them 
thought that the condition existing in 1861 required such 
extreme medicine. 

However, on some points the Kentucky leaders were at 
one. Upon the secession of South Carolina, Crittenden 
introduced the so-called Crittenden Compromise, which it 
seems had been prepared by Madison Johnson of Lexington, 
Ky., in consultation with Guthrie, Breckinridge and Critten- 
den. 2 This proposition proved acceptable to everybody but 
the Republican party leaders and the radical minority. It was 
not only defeated in the Senate by the Republicans but was 

1 This does not mean that there were no Breckinridge men in Louis- 
ville. 
'Crittenden papers, Dec, i860. 



525] KENTUCKY'S DECISION riI 

prevented by them from being referred to the American 
people for acceptance or rejection before the controversy 
was pushed to the bloody extreme. Cassius M. Clay, 1 one 
of the leading Kentucky Republicans of that day, in fact, 
practically all of the Kentuckians, with the exception of 
Abraham Lincoln whom some have considered a product of 
Kentucky, favored adjustment rather than civil war or a 
dissolution of the Union. 

After the failure of the Crittenden Compromise, Ken- 
tuckians refused to consider it an ultimatum. They seemed 
to have felt that if an earthquake should swallow up the 
state it would not be more disastrous to them than disunion 
and civil war. They, therefore, responded with alacrity to 
the Virginia summons for a Peace Conference. Unfortun- 
ately, the delegations from the northern states were made 
up of carefully picked " not-an-inch " Republicans, and 
the Peace Conference made no headway toward concilia- 
tion. 2 It so happened that neither the Peace Conference 
delegations nor the members of the United States Congress 
were freshly elected by the people on the issue of " com- 
promise and peace " versus " civil war before compromise." 
And the predominant groups of leaders in the northern 
states felt that the efforts at compromise were nothing 

1 Chase papers, Clay to Chase, Feb. I, 1861. 

1 James B. Clay reported that he found at the Peace Conference " such 
miserable trickery, log-rolling, and clap-trap as would disgrace a county 
meeting to manufacture a platform for a constable to stand on." 
James B. Clay, one of the Kentucky commissioners to the Peace Con- 
ference called by Virginia, was a son of Henry Clay. For James B. 
Clay's speech see the Kentucky Yeoman, March 20, 1861. See also 
Tyler papers, Julia Tyler to her mother, Feb. 3, 1861 : " There seems 
such a fixed determination to do mischief on the part of the Black Re- 
publicans." Julia Tyler was with ex-Pres. John Tyler at the Peace 
Conference. Tyler was the presiding officer. 



II2 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [526 

but an attempt to perpetuate the power of the Democrats 
by ruining the Republican party. 1 

In the meantime, the Kentucky Legislature suggested the 
calling of a great national convention freshly elected by the 
American people, to deal with the subjects in controversy 
as became a free, intelligent and enlightened people. Ken- 
tucky did not want the Union to be broken in the " mortar 
of secession to be strung together on a rope of sand ", but 
neither did she want a higher law than the Constitution of 
the United States as interpreted by the Supreme Court to 
be set up by the Republican minority. The Republicans 
consented to calling a National Convention, provided there 
was no disturbance of the public peace before they got it 
called. 

However, the reenforcement of Fort Sumter directly 
brought on a so-called disturbance of the public peace and a 
call for 75,000 troops was thus substituted for the call of a 
National Convention. Of course, it was obvious after the 
spring elections that the non-compromising Republicans could 
secure only a minority of the delegates to such a Convention 
freshly elected by the people. Moreover, the calling of 
such a convention would have been a substantial admission 
on the part of the Republican leaders that they, themselves, 
were not representative of the nation and that their argu- 
ment in favor of a sectional control of the national govern- 
ment was invalid. In other words, the calling of a 
National Convention would have amounted to an admission 
that the Republican party leaders were wrong in the pre- 
mises — not on the slavery question, but on the matter of 
their advocacy of a sectional control of the national presi- 
dency. Lincoln's statement that if Anderson came out of 
Sumter, he, himself, would have to come out of the White 

1 See footnote to chapter iv, supra, pp. 64-66. 



5 27] KENTUCKY'S DECISION H3 

House 1 was doubtless a correct estimate of the effect 
a withdrawal of the troops from Sumter and the calling 
of a National Convention would have had on the political 
fortunes of the sectional Republican party. It can be 
readily understood just why Republican party politicians 
would prefer the reenforcing of Sumter to the calling of 
a National Convention. An appeal to the brain of the 
nation meant the party's annihilation, while an appeal to the 
brawn of the north meant the party's salvation. Manifestly, 
there was no way to save the Republican party if it made an 
appeal to a National Convention, that American Court of 
last resort, the legality of whose decisions, no mere poli- 
tical party has yet offered to challenge. By refraining 
from such an appeal, the Republican leaders violated the 
most fundamental of the requirements for the preservation 
of domestic tranquillity or peace — that greatest of the pur- 
poses for which government is instituted among men. It 
can do no harm to conjecture what the policy of the Repub- 
lican leaders would have been, had the calling of a National 
Convention meant a continuation of their own political 
supremacy and control of the national government. The 
road to power is rather obviously the road they took, but, 
they thereby resigned all claims to a statesmanship equal 
to that of 1787. 

After the failure of the Peace Conference and while the 
Republicans were slowly gaining ground by their Fabian 
policy of masterly inactivity until the patience of the seces- 
sionists per se became exhausted, the Kentuckians busied 
themselves very tardily with choosing members to a border 

1 Diary of a Public Man, p. 487 (March 6) : "Well, you say Major 
Anderson is a good man, and I have no doubt he is ; but if he is right 
it will be a bad job for me if Kentucky secedes. When he goes out of 
Sumter [peaceful evacuation] I shall have to go out of the White 
House." 



! I4 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [ 52 g 

state convention. It seems that the purpose of this conven- 
tion was to give everybody a choice between the northern 
and southern extremes by offering them a plan for a peace- 
ful reconstruction of the Union which would exclude all 
states from membership who would not renounce the here- 
sies of a higher law than the Constitution of the United 
States as interpreted by the Supreme Court and secession 
as one of the legal rights of a state. Massachusetts and 
South Carolina might have been temporarily left out of the 
reconstructed union and needless to say the public leaders 
who were committed unequivocably to the essential doc- 
trines of these states would have been buried beyond resur- 
rection, politically speaking. 1 The spring elections are in- 
delible evidence 2 that one of the border states' plans would 
have carried if they could have gotten their propositions con- 
cretely before the American people before the veering of 
public opinion caused by the firing at Fort Sumter. S. S. 
Nicholas of Louisville fully realized the situation and 
Crittenden would have acted more quickly but he wanted to 
try all constitutional means first before resorting to uncon- 
stitutional measures. 3 The old Whigs would not follow 
Breckinridge, yet they could agree on nothing in this emer- 
gency which had the swift concreteness of Breckinridge's 
plan. Crittenden said that Henry Clay would have been 
worth his weight in gold many thousands of times if but 
once more he could have come forth from Ashland with his" 

1 Some of the Kentuckians thought that the citizens of Massachusetts 
and South Carolina should be colonized somewhere together beyond the 
bounds of civilization and thus enable the peace to be kept in the United 
States. 

* Chase papers. Nash to Chase, April o, 1861, "The elections show 
that the combination of Douglas men, Americans and others voting for 
Lincoln last year, can be induced to unite." 

•Crittenden papers, Crittenden to S. S. Nicholas, Dec, i860. 



529] KENTUCKY'S DECISION H 5 

irresistible eloquence and eagle glance. 1 As it was, the Re- 
publicans were audaciously proclaiming that Lincoln stood 
where Clay stood. 2 

After the stirring up of Fort Sumter and the calling out 
of 75,000 troops, the Kentucky leaders had only a forlorn 
hope oi either restoring peace or of preserving the union 
without war to the bitter end. 3 The young men generally 
came to the conclusion that the only possible course was to 
join the confederacy, while the men over fifty came to the 
conclusion that the Union must be sustained at all hazards. 1 

There can be no doubt that the most intelligent Ken- 
tuckians understood that civil war meant emancipation. 
The southern party put great emphasis on the fact that Old 
Abe was craftily engineering a huge John Brown raid into 
the South, Joseph Holt's aunt had great difficulty in not 
believing that Old Abe was coming with an army of negroes 1 
to smash things up in the South even though her nephew, 
one of the prominent Kentucky unionists, severely assured 
her otherwise. 5 It can be readily understood what a dis- 
agreeable task it was for Kentucky to take either side of the 
Brothers' War. All Kentuckians were more or less like the 
man who sold goods to a firm in Tennessee but received no 
pay for his goods and who was arrested and condemned 

1 Speech of Crittenden Teported in the Louisville Journal, March 22, 
1861. 

'New York Tribune, Feb. 2, 1861 ; Boston Atlas and Bee, Aug. 24, 
i860; Cincinnati Gazette, Aug. II, i860; Worcester Spy, Oct. 10, 1860; 
The Great Rebellion, by J. M. Botts, p. 106, Lincoln's assertion " I have 
always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig." 

l Louisznlle Journal, April 20, 1861, "Kentuckians! You constitute 
today the forlorn hope of the Union. Will you stand firm and gloriously 
in the breach or will you ignobly and insanely fly?" 

* Official Records, War of the Rebellion, vol. iv, p. 313, Thomas to 
Cameron, Oct. 21, 1861. 

5 Holt papers, Mary Stephens to Joseph Holt, May, 1861. 



n6 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [530 

for treason by the Lincoln government for trading with the 
enemy. Robbed in one confederacy and shot in the other, 
his ghost was grateful to neither. 

Regardless of the permanent interests of Kentucky, her 
antipathy to the Lincoln policy almost took her out of the 
Union. It was possible to prevent her immediate secession 
only by passing a declaration of armed neutrality as the posi- 
tion of the state during the strife. 1 Armed neutrality was a 
perfectly logical position for a people who were equally op- 
posed to disunion and coercion. But it is not possible to say 
that either group of leaders in Kentucky thought that it 
would be a tenable position. It was a temporary expedient 
and was a sort of armed truce between the opposing forces in 
the state and nation so far as Kentucky was concerned — ■ 
between those who wished to sustain the rights of the South 
and to sustain only an administration of the national gov- 
ernment which was sworn to uphold the Constitution of 
the United States as interpreted by the Supreme Court and 
those who felt that the general government must be sus- 
tained at all hazards even though the administration were 
totally obnoxious. The great Whig editor, George D, 
Prentice, vividly explained to the Kentucky Unionists' sat- 
isfaction that " the office of apostle was not to be abolished 
because Judas was one apostle." Lincoln, the old Whig 
showed, was not the United States Government, and his 
office was brief and fleeting, while it was to be hoped that 
the government would last forever and the distinction 
would be observed between a permanent office and a tem- 
porary officer. The truce of armed neutrality was agreed to 

^'Neutrality," according to Paul Shipman, associate editor of the 
Louisville Journal, "was the covering which the larva of Kentucky 
Unionism spun for its protection." See Paul Shipman's unpublished 
manuscript account of Kentucky's Neutrality for which I am indebted 
to John Wilson Townsend. 



53 1 ] KENTUCKY'S DECISION H 7 

by both Lincoln l and Davis, 2 neither of whom was much 
better prepared for war than were the people of Kentucky. 
However, neutrality was a position of more value to the 
North than to the South. The Southerners were at great dis- 
advantage because they received no considerable help from 
the Southern Confederacy. The Unionists opposed the state 
arming herself because the Kentucky Governor was a south- 
ern sympathizer and consequently they feared that all the 
arms purchased by the state would be turned against the 
Union. The two groups of leaders agreed finally on a joint 
commission composed of both groups with the commander of 
the state militia holding the balance of power. This wasi 
General Simon Bolivar Buckner, 3 who the Unionists had 
reason to believe might be persuaded to side with them but 

1 Among the executive papers of Governor Magoffin is the following 
memorandum signed with the initials and in the handwriting of John J. 
Crittenden : " It is my duty as I conceive to suppress an insurrection 
existing within the United States. I wish to do this with the least 
possible disturbance or annoyance to well-disposed people anywhere. 
So far I have not sent an armed force into Kentucky ; nor have I any 
present purpose to do so. I sincerely desire that no necessity for it 
may be presented; but I mean to say nothing which shall hereafter 
embarrass me in the performance of what may seem to be my duty." 
This memorandum was furnished General Buckner in the presence of 
John J. Crittenden. It is dated July 10, 1861, and is very typical of 
President Lincoln's methods of procedure. It was not intended for 
publication and therefore not signed by the wary President. For an 
excellent account of the Southern Confederacy's commercial reasons 
for recognizing Kentucky's neutrality, see E. Merton Coulter's " The 
Effects of Secession on the Commerce of the Mississippi Valley" in 
Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Dec, 1916. 

7 Official Records, vol. iv, pp. 190-191, Sept. 13, 1861. 

3 Ibid., vol. iv, p. 255, Aug. 17, 1861. To the Honorable Secretary of 
War, from A. Lincoln, "Unless there be reason to the contrary, not 
known to me, make out a commission for Simon B. Buckner, of Ken- 
tucky, as a brigadier-general of volunteers. It is to be put in the hands 
of General Anderson, and delivered to Gen. Buckner or not, at the dis- 
cretion of Gen. Anderson. Of course, it is to remain a secret unless 
and until the commission is delivered." 



H8 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [532 

who afterward became a southern general. The Federal 
Goverment sent arms into the state to be distributed among 
Unionists in lieu of the guns which the young southern 
sympathizers were taking south with them as they went to 
join the Confederate armies. Some of the guns shipped in 
by the Federals also fell into southern hands; for there 
were seme who did not hesitate to take the oath of allegiance 
to the Constitution of the United States (with the mental 
reservation "as interpreted by the Supreme Court") and 
proceed south with the arms thus secured. 

The southern party was placed at an additional disadvan- 
tage which was an even greater handicap than the lack of 
munitions. The columns^ of the most powerful paper in 
the state, the Louisville- Journal, were turned against the 
southern side. Napoleon is said to have remarked that he 
dreaded four hostile newspapers more than an army of 
100,000 men. The circulation of the Journal was the lar- 
gest of any paper in the entire middle section of the Union 
and it was doubtless equal to 40,000 men in the Union army 
at this time. 

The editor of this paper was George D. Prentice, whose 
only children, two well-beloved sons, joined the Confederate 
army. Prentice was the intellectual match for any man in 
the country; his mastery of the English language, his pun- 
gent wit, his incomparable understanding of the principles 
of American government, conbined to make the editorials 
of the Journal tremendously effective. The following 
editorial will give some clue to why he proved not only a 
" thorn but a whole forest of thorns " 1 in the flesh of the 
southern party : 

" Nullification is or assumes to be the right of a state to 

1 Louisville Journal, July 8, 1861, "Our neighbor of the Courier calls 
us the Devil. We are sorry we can't occasionally lay a gentle hand on 
him without him thinking that the Devil has got hold of him." 



533] KENTUCKY'S DECISION IIO , 

nullify Federal laws under the Constitution; it claims to be 
a strictly constitutional right. Revolution or the right of 
resistance to insufferable tyranny by whatever name it is 
known, makes no such absurd pretentions. It underlies all 
political forms and does not ask their sanction. It is the ex- 
treme medicine ' of society and does not rate itself asi 
' daily food.' It is a forcible right, and does not demand 
with impunity that which belongs to a peaceable one. It 
carries with it openly the solemn issues of life and death 
and does not trip lightly forward on trivial occasions. It 
is the explosion of human nature under the compression of 
political abuses, and does not occur until the pressure has 
grown insupportable. In all these respects, and thousand 
others, it is utterly unlike nullification, which professes to be 
a legitimate and constitutional remedy for any mere ordin- 
ary act of the nation which a state may please to deem 
noxious. Nullification is the establishment of revolution 
as a constituent force of the government; a more pernicious 
heresy could hardly be conceived. Our neighbor (a 
southern democratic editor) is confounding it with that 
grand old right of resistance to oppression which no free 
man since the world began has ever denied. This shows 
that he is either writing without thinking or thinking to pre- 
cious little purposes. He is puzzling the wits of his readers 
and cudgelling his own about a matter that is as plain as 
the nose on his face or as plain as his face itself." x 

It was the Louisville Journal which first raised the white 
standard of neutrality even before the firing at Sumter and 
continued to press for this decision from the Kentucky 
Legislature until the neutrality resolutions were actually 
passed and until the southern sympathizing governor was 
forced to issue the neutrality preclamation toward the last 

1 Ibid., March 3, i860. 



I2 o THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^ 

of May, 1861. 1 The Journal pointed out that secession in 
Kentucky would instantly make her the seat of war. And 
war as Prentice described it was so vivid — with the Ken- 
tucky river towns in ashes, the Kentucky fertile fields plowed 
by artillery wheels and the hurtling iron storm of cannon 
balls, the Kentucky roads resounding with the tramp of 
armed men and in addition, the wails of affrighted women 
and children, the roar of fires and the crash of falling 
bridges — that it is not surprising that the people of Ken- 
tucky consented to pause until the state was at least armed. 
Upon whom was the blow to fall most heavily, the Journal 
asked, and answered, " Upon defenseless women and child- 
ren. These are the persons who suffer most in their pov- 
erty, loneliness and desolation, protracted it may be through 
many years. Dying on the battlefield is not the only form 
of suffering by any means. And yet the seceding states 
are anxious to precipitate all the horrors of war upon the 
border states and to compel us to be the shield to protect 
their property and their families." 

" Kentucky," Prentice assured his readers, " though 
standing near the brink of a precipice, occupies a lofty and 
proud position. The path of duty which so often is ardu- 
ous and painful, is for Kentucky the safe and flowery path 
of peace. Let Kentucky firmly maintain her position of 
submitting to the constitutional authority of the general 
government but maintaining her neutrality and protesting 
against war, and she will save her fields from being ravaged, 
impoverished and desolate, crippled in power, demoralized 
in character and half surrounded by enemies where undy- 
ing hatred and jealousy would be the endless source of 

1 Ibid., Jan. 28, 1861, " And when the shock of war shall, if it must 
come at some future day, let Kentucky be found standing in armed 
neutrality beneath the white flag of peace — an asylum for the victims of 
Civil War, and a sublime example to our erring countrymen." 



5 35] KENTUCKY'S DECISION 121 

renewed troubles and wars. When we calmly survey the 
'blessings of peace and union which Kentucky may enjoy 
in contrast with the dark and bloody ruin into which she 
would plunge by secession, we are tempted to ask if there is 
any sane man in Kentucky who is willing for the sake of 
engaging in a civil war for which there is no just cause, to 
leap into this yawning gulf and drag down his family, 
friends, countrymen and even liberty itself. . . . Peace is 
prosperity and liberty, as war is desolation and despotism. 
If Kentucky would preserve her own independence and 
civil liberty from the perils of this conflict, let her stand 
where she is, in peaceful neutrality." x So much for the 
forceful ideas by the propagation of which Prentice made 
possible Kentucky's temporary neutrality. 

Kentucky's neutrality was not formally violated until 
September, when a southern army occupied Columbus to 
prevent a northern army from getting there first. 2 From a 
military point of view this may have been a good move, but 
politically speaking it was almost as deplorable for the 
southern cause in Kentucky as the firing at Sumter was for 
that cause in the northern states. 3 The Legislature which 
had been elected in August and met in September requested 
the southern army to withdraw, without making the same 
request of the Federal troops which were being enlisted 
within the state. 4 The Federal Government had taken 
great care not to establish a camp in the state until after 
the August elections for the State Legislature ; the southern 
party had hoped that the Federal Government would take 
such action because it was felt that if the Kentucky people 
were absolutely convinced that they would have to fight on 

1 Louisville Journal, May 29, 1861. < 
1 Official Records, vol. iv, p. 181, Sept. 4, 1861. 
*Ibid., vol. iv. pp. 411-412, Sept. 18, 1861. 
l Ibid., vol. iv, pp. 411-412, Sept. 18, 1861. 



I2 2 THE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 [^5 

one side or the other, the majority would espouse the 
southern cause. The Unionists had taken care to get can- 
didates for the Legislature of an unconditional variety 
" without any ifs," and they apparently succeeded. 1 

However, there were men in this Legislature elected at the 
August elections who would have turned the state over 
to the Confederacy if the premature Emancipation Procla- 
mation of General Fremont had not been promptly an- 
nulled by the Lincoln Administration. In the event that 
the Proclamation of 1861 had been sustained. Speed, Lin- 
coln's right-hand man in Kentucky, felt that it would be as 
hopeless to hold Kentucky as it would have been to row a 
boat up Niagara Falls. 2 The Kentuckians were opposed 
to emancipation by the sword. Nor was the North ripe 
at this time for the revelation of this policy. The Battle of 
Bull Run increased the number of abolitionists tremend- 
ously, but even by the first of January, 1863, there was 
hardly enough backing in popular sentiment to sustain such 
a measure as a necessity of war. And it was with the 
utmost difficulty that two-thirds of Congress was finally 
mustered behind the Thirteenth Amendment to the Consti- 
tution, even in 1865, and three-fourths of the states could 
only be obtained by requiring the seceded southern states 
to accept this as a condition to their re-admittance to the 
reign of civil law. 

Kentucky's Unionist decision, if it can be called a deci- 
sion when so many of her sons fought in the southern 
army, was of the utmost importance to the Lincoln ad- 
ministration, because it gave some few shreds of national- 
ism to cover its original sectionalism — and of these shreds, 

1 Prentice wanted true union men nominated for the Legislature, " not 
some political tadpole who will lose his Union tail before the Legisla- 
ture meets." Louisznlle Journal, July 3, 1861. 

'Holt papers, Speed to Holt, Sept. 7, 1861. 



537] KENTUCKY'S DECISION I2 $ 

the Republicans were sadly in need. 1 It seems that the 
Lincoln administration rightly regarded the political situa- 
tion in Kentucky as of more importance than the military 
situation. The neutrality of the peaceable Kentuckians was 
thus essentially nationalistic in its effect. In any event it 
cannot be said that the Kentuckians were not willing to do 
their utmost to sustain government based on consent. For 
Kentucky contributed quotas to both armies 2 and fortunate 
indeed was the Kentucky family whose members were alt 
in the same army. She had longed desperately to prevent 
the interregnum of war, for she knew that peace meant 
a continuation without interruption of liberty and that war 
would bring despotism and desolation. Her reward was 
the crown of thorns. And yet she will not have suffered in 
vain if the world some day comes to understand, as she un- 
derstood, how to hold the balance evenly between two ex- 
tremes. " Doth not wisdom cry and understanding put 
forth her voice, by me princes rule and nobles, even all the 
judges of the earth." 

At one of the Kentucky reunions, where the men who 
wore the blue and the men who wore the grey were frater- 
nally assembled together, a Union veteran was heard to 
murmur that the Kentucky Confederates always spoke as if 
they had won the Civil War. In a certain sense it must be 
admitted that the South did win the Civil War. It should 
be borne in mind that she stood primarily for the Constitu- 
tion of the United States as interpreted by the Supreme 
Court and that she refused to submit peacefully to a sec- 

1 Speed to his mother, Oct. 29, 1861, "I had a long talk with him 
(Gen. Banks) about the future. He looks upon our action in Kentucky 
as worth everything to the Government. It nationalizes the contest and 
renders either compromise or peace impossible except upon terms of 
submission to the national will, liberally and fairly construed." 

1 Both sides fought for the perpetuation of government based on 
consent. 



I2 4 T HE PEACEABLE AMERICANS OF 1860-1861 r^g 

tional control of the national government. Her position 
on both of these points has been sustained, although there 
are no amendments in the Constitution announcing the con- 
summation. It is true that slavery was abolished by the Civil 
War, but the Northerners did not fight to free the slaves. 
And the Civil War Amendments which the Republican 
Party incorporated in the Constitution of the United States 
at the point of the sword have not been able to touch the 
brain quality of the African. The position of the negro in 
the United States remains relatively the same ; for two gen- 
erations is not sufficient to modify inherited tendencies 
which are the result of thousands of years of past envir- 
onment. It is extremely difficult for a fair-minded per- 
son to say that the Civil War Amendments did not put 
the cart before the horse. Moreover to assert that war was 
the only method by which the slaves could have been freed 
is, not only to deny the efficacy of popular government, but 
also to slander the bona fide abolitionists of i860 — for, 
in view of the economic conditions of modern times, they 
felt that abolition by the sword was entirely superfluous, 
since the slave system was even then on its economic death- 
bed. 

When Abraham Lincoln took the decisive step which 
led to the " disturbance of the public peace," he evidently did 
so with the expectation that the public opinion of the future 
would forgive a civil war which resulted in the abolition 
of slavery. There can be no doubt that he correctly esti- 
mated the trend of public opinion even up to the present time. 
However, a new current has set in which he did not take 
into consideration. Public opinion is now turning against 
war — and especially against civil war, as a just and desirable 
method of settling disputes between civilized people. Be- 
cause of this new trend of public opinion, the civilized world 
may yet reverse its present decision on the Civil War. It 



^q-i KENTUCKY'S DECISION 125 

is entirely probable that the public of 1961 may hold that 
there need have been no appeal from the ballot to the bullet 
in 1 861, had the American people of that day possessed 
sufficient political sagacity to distinguish between appear- 
ances and reality. 



VITA 

Mary Scrugham was born May 22, 1885. She re- 
cieved her earliest education in the Public Schools of Lex- 
ington, Ky., and was prepared for college at Sayre Insti- 
tute. She was graduated with honors from the Kentucky 
State College in 1906 with an A.B. degree. She received 
the A.M. degree from Columbia University in 1910. She 
spent the summer of 191 1 in England and attended lectures 
at Oxford University. In 191 3-19 14 she was special 
scholar in American History at Columbia University and 
while in residence at Columbia, she pursued courses of study 
under Professors Dunning, Robinson, Beard, Shepherd, 
Giddings, Sloane and Johnson. Her seminar work was 
under Professor Dunning. She taught school for a num- 
ber of years and was employed during the Great War 
in the Purchase, Storage and Traffic Division of the Gen- 
eral Staff. In 1919-1920 she prepared a special course of 
lectures in citizenship for newly enfranchised women and 
lectured on this subject in various places in Kentucky. 

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